Japan to seek extending Iraq aid beyond July

Tokyo, Dec 29: Japan will seek to extend a law allowing its military to provide humanitarian and reconstruction aid in Iraq beyond next July, media reports today said.

Japan currently has some 200 air force personnel based in Kuwait who are transporting supplies to the US-led coalition in Iraq, but a law enabling the mission is set to expire on July 31, 2007.

The government will seek to extend the law for another year or two in a session of parliament that starts next month, newspapers said.

Japan sent around 600 ground troops to southern Iraq in 2004 for reconstruction and humanitarian aid, but the last of the soldiers returned home in July this year, completing the mission without firing a shot or suffering any casualties.

The dispatch, the Japanese military's riskiest overseas mission since World War Two, was a milestone in Japan's shift away from a purely defensive posture towards a bigger international role for its forces.

Critics said the mission violated Japan's pacifist constitution by sending the soldiers to a de facto war zone.

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