Posted on 03/08/2003 2:51:45 PM PST by DeaconBenjamin
TOKYO — With a U.S.-led military attack on Iraq increasingly likely, Japanese officials are considering legislation enabling Japan's defense forces to join reconstruction efforts in a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, government sources said Saturday.
The officials are apparently concerned about what tangible support Japan can offer for Iraqi reconstruction in the post-Saddam era, because Tokyo will not be engaging in a military campaign, given its war-renouncing Constitution.
Also behind the backdrop is a lesson Japan learned from a diplomatic embarrassment suffered after the 1991 Persian Gulf War when Japan footed a huge amount of the bill for the military campaign but committed no forces, the sources said.
The plan for the Iraqi mission this time assumes a U.N. resolution to endorse the creation of new security forces and the stationing of troops from other nations in Iraq as well as other measures to aid reconstruction in the Middle Eastern country after a war, according to the sources.
Japan will urge members of the U.N. Security Council to adopt such a resolution, which would also help generate support within Japan for the idea of sending the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to postwar Iraq, they said.
The officials are considering engaging SDF troops in transportation, communications, materials supply, and disposal of chemical weapons possessed by Iraq. But some Defense Agency officials have expressed reservations about working on chemical weapons because Japan's forces are not fully capable of conducting such an assignment, the officials said.
The responsibility could thus be limited only to transportation and other logistical support, they said.
After the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Japan came up with special antiterrorism laws that have allowed the SDF to send vessels to the Indian Ocean to supply fuel for U.S.-led antiterrorism operations in the region.
The officials, however, see the need for a new law because they are unsure if sending troops for postwar reconstruction would be mandated by these laws or would be tantamount to sending troops for U.N. peacekeeping operations, which Japan has been doing. (Kyodo News)
What's really intriguing to me is that the two largest foreign aid donor nations in the world, Japan and the U.S., are getting so little public support from their benficiary countries.
Methinks that the whole world is about to have its status quo shaken up, and lots of little fiefdoms are suddenly going to realize that they had it better back when things were done the old way...
It's high time that Europe's "international" criminal court prosecute those who violated UN sanctions on Iraq.
BWAA HA HA! That would be the day!
Even better idea ..... the Japanese could amend their pacifist constitution to allow military ops in alliance with the United States.
F$%^ the UN
This information should send the Koreans and the Chinese into a major fit.While they are hyper ventilating the Taiwanese then admit that they too bought Soviet nuclear know-how.And that they posses at least 10 weapons.
If the Chinese thought that by kicking the US out of the Pacific that they would be the only nuke power, then they would be in for a major awakening.And their little ploy with rabid Kim will have failed.
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