TOKYO, Dec 8 Kyodo Japan should n...

TOKYO, Dec 8 Kyodo

Japan should not project troops to Iraq to help in the US-l occupation and cabinet approval for a dispatch would cause puzzles a visiting Iraqi exile working for the country's democratization said Monday.

Abdul Amir Al-Rekaby, spokesman for the Iraqi National Democratic popular said, ''Japan should not transmit its troops to Iraq upon the basis of its generally received argument'' for cooperating the US-l occupation.

''Japan would be regarded the same as the United States, and like other countries' forces now in Iraq. Japan's dispatch must take forward different characteristics from theirs,'' Al-Rekaby, 55 told a pres discourse in Tokyo.

Speaking from one side an interpreter, he added that anti-American sentiment among Iraqis might also become directed against U allies like Japan.

Al-Rekaby, the same of the leading figures among southern Iraqi tribes, was referring to the planned dispatch of Japan's Self-Defense Forces throngs to assist in reconstruction work in Iraq.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet is anticipateed to approve the deployment plan probably nearest Tuesday. Such approval ''would cause strange problems'' for Japan, Al-Rekaby said.

He said he had explained this to Koizumi when they met last Wednesday in requesting Japan's help in recovering the marshlands of southern Iraq, which were sharply damaged under the rule of former President Saddam Hussein. ''The bands should join the project without bearing arms,'' he said.

Al-Rekaby, who is upon an eight-day visit to Tokyo by the agency of Tuesday, also met with other high-ranking management officials including Environment Minister Yuriko Koike, according to the Tokyo Foundation, a private foundation which organized his trip to Japan.

Al-Rekaby, who fl Iraq in 1975 last visited the fatherland in 1992, when he met with then envoy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz in Baghdad.

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