HindustanTimes.com

Monday, September 1, 2003

Japan to send fact-finding team to Iraq before sending troops

Reuters
Tokyo, September 1

Before deciding on whether to send its troops to Iraq, Japan would send a
fact-finding team to assess what role it can play in rebuilding the war-torn
country, top officials said on Monday without setting any date for the same.
"We are looking into the timing," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said.

"We want to send the team as soon as possible. The situation (in Iraq)
changes and we have to consider that, but that does not mean we cannot send
(a team)."

The government in July pushed through a law allowing it to send troops to
"non-combat zones" in Iraq. Opposition parties said that there were no such
areas and that deployment would violate Japan's pacifist constitution.
Japanese troops have not fired a shot in combat since Japan's World War II
defeat in 1945.

Any eventual dispatch of troops to Iraq was thrown