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Japanese troops 'leave for Iraq'

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  • Japanese troops 'leave for Iraq'

    Japanese troops 'leave for Iraq'

    An advance unit of Japanese soldiers has set off on a humanitarian mission to Iraq, Japanese media has reported.

    A flight carrying members of a 40-strong group of air force personnel left New Tokyo International Airport on Friday morning, news reports said.

    Japan plans to send about 1,000 troops to aid reconstruction efforts in the country's biggest foreign deployment since World War II.

    The decision to send forces to Iraq has provoked strong domestic opposition.

    Pacifist constitution

    Japan's cabinet approved sending the force on 9 December.

    A special law allowing the dispatch was passed by Japan's parliament in July, but only under the condition that the troops be sent to a place away from combat.

    The country's pacifist constitution, adopted following the war, forbids the country from using force to settle disputes.

    Most of the troops will be based in south-eastern Iraq, where they will help restore water services, offer medical aid and rebuild schools.

    Public opposition

    At a ceremony to mark the formation of the air force's contingent on Wednesday, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Japan had a responsibility to help restore stability to Iraq.

    "Japan's prosperity and development rests on the peace and stability of the world," he was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying.

    "We cannot be absorbed in ourselves. We must lend our strength for the reconstruction and peace of other countries."

    However recent opinion polls have suggested that up to two-thirds of the Japanese public are opposed to sending military personnel to Iraq.

    Incidents such as the suicide bombing at the UN office in Baghdad in August and the killing of two Japanese diplomats on 29 November have added to this concern.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3347653.stm
    "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

  • #2
    Good thing they didnt approve those troops a couple days earlier....:doh!
    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

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