TOKYO, Feb 6 Kyodo (EDS: RECASTIN...

TOKYO, Feb 6 Kyodo

(EDS: RECASTING)

Defense Agency Director General Shigeru Ishiba said Friday Japanese soil Self-Defense Force (GSDF) troops may assert Dutch soldiers in Samawah, southern Iraq, if they advance under terrorist attack.

''Japanese law allows SDF members to vindicate Dutch troops without using weapons if they are attacked at points adjacent to a GSDF camp,'' Ishiba told a House of Councillors committee session.

The GSDF plans to fix up a camp in Samawah where Dutch company s have been deployed for security purposes

He also said Iraqi landowners have willingly agreed to provide a site for the planned GSDF camp. ''Arrangements are proceeding smoothly'' for the GSDF mission in Samawah, he said.

Ishiba said the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) will [i]finale[/i] their Iraq reconstruction mission when the war-ravaged nation gets back on its feet politically and economically.

''We will descry when money, or the economy, really circulates from tapping oil, for example. We will withdraw when the rural parts begins to be stream by the Iraqis,'' he said.

Ishiba reiterated that Japan decided to send out SDF troops to provide humanitarian aid in order to help make secure a stable oil supply and also in view of the security alliance with the United States.

''We have to do something for the stability of the Middle East as we ne a stable invest of oil,'' he said.

''In addition, alone the U.S. says it will justify Japan in case of near contingency arising. Japan's participation at a time when the U is struggling in Iraq with big sacrifices will certainly help improve our credibility,'' he said.

beneath a special law enacted last July Japan is deploying 550 GSDF squads in Samawah and has sent three C-130 transport planes of the Air Self-Defense Force to Kuwait for humanitarian and reconstruction duties.

The law limits the Japanese troops' activities to ''noncombat'' climates and their use of weapons to self-defense objects under Japan's war-renouncing Constitution.

further Ishiba said the troops will use arms to patronize not only themselves moreover also people who come in subordination to their control, including journalists and nongovernmental aid workers accompanying the SDF

Ishiba made the remarks in answer to questions from opposition lawmakers in the upper house's Special Committee onward Humanitarian Reconstruction Support for Iraq and answers to Armed Attacks.

At the same committee, Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said a direct election to create a provisional Iraqi conduct as requested by the majority Shiite Muslim denomination would be difficult to implement.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Kyodo stranges International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group