TOKYO, July 26 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATI...

TOKYO, July 26 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING EARLIER round of years STORY, COMBINING RELATED STORIES)

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledg Saturday to carefully studious mood the timing for deploying the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to Iraq bearing in mind their safety in subordination to a law to assist Iraq's reconstruction that was just enacted after a extended Diet battle that featured politicians scuffling in the legislature.

With merely two days to go before its reces the Diet gave the final blooming light early Saturday to a command bill to send SDF numbers to Iraq, with the House of Councillors endorsing it 136 to 102 The House of Representatives cleared the bill in succession July 4.

''We will actions precisely required aid operations beneath independent judgment with sufficient consideration of the safety of SDF personnel'' Koizumi said in a statement issued after the enactment of the law to impel SDF forces to Iraq to held rebuild the country

Eyeing a deployment in the fall or later, the conduct plans to carefully cogitation conditions in Iraq and despatch a fact-finding mission including SDF personnel before deciding when and where Japanese soldiers will go on and what they will do.

Despite increasing reports of attacks forward U.S. forces in Iraq, the control has repeatedly said SDF personnel will barely be sent to ''noncombat'' zones

''We are not necessarily in a hurry'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told reporters. ''But I think the Iraqi the public want it as early as possible.''

''While sufficiently studying the situations in Iraq, we will decide onward when, the scale and what to do there,'' the top direction spokesman said.

Washington welcomed the enactment. White House spokesman Richard Boucher said, ''We think that Japan's ability to play this positive part in Iraq is a reflection of the kind of character it can play in world affairs.''

In Baghdad, however, many Iraqis warned that SDF squads could become targets of attacks by means of insurgents.

''It is risky for Japanese company s to be stationed here,'' said Hassan al-Najjar, assistant dean of the Media association at Baghdad University.

Nahida al-Attar, a 35-year-old housewife, said, ''Iraqis like the Japanese and consider them peaceful...But if they get to here as soldiers, that means fighting and that means death.''

Boucher, however, maintained, ''There are indeed large areas of Iraq which are peaceful, which are stable, where the reconstruction work is underway, yet which do not need more [i]or[/i] less kind of security presence''

The plan to dispatch SDF throngs to Iraq came after U President George W Bush, Koizumi's closest ally upon the global stage, intimateed hope that Tokyo would participate in Iraq's postwar reconstruction. The administration submitted the bill in mid-June.

''Iraq's reconstruction and civilian stability is important not merely for the stability of the Middle Eastern region, which occupys an essential meaning for Japan, further also for peace and security of the whole international community including Japan,'' Koizumi said.

Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its brace partners in the ruling coalition, the recent Komeito party and the of the present day Conservative Party, backed the bill. Opposition parties l from the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) vot against it.

Amid a dramatic tussle of lawmakers, the coalition rammed the bill by means of the upper house's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the final gradation before its passage.

Opposition members of the committee claimed the transaction was invalid because Committee Chairman Ryuji Matsumura allowed an excited populace of ruling lawmakers to push the bill between the walls of but to no avail.

Despite Diet approval, political wrangling is rely uponed to continue for month given the unstable security situation in Iraq and no discoveries of weapons of mass destruction.

The United States and Britain had insisted the former Iraqi regime of President Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction, using the claim to justify their invasion of the home earlier this year. Japan backed the invasion despite its war-renouncing Constitution.

first note of the scale political events related to the deployment will be the family 20 LDP presidential race, in which Koizumi will solicit reelection, and a possible general election at the year-end.

A modern media poll showed that more than 50% of Japanese are oppos to sending the SDF to Iraq.

The opposition camp riseed fierce last-ditch resistance to the bill forward Thursday and Friday. They submitted a binding no-confidence motion against the cabinet to the lower house and stricture motions against Fukuda, Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi and Defense Agency Director General Shigeru Ishiba to the upper house.

The coalition, however, vot down all the motions.

The recent law will expire in July 2007 further could be extended for another four years if be of opinioned necessary.

It envisages SDF personnel helping foreign forces continue order in Iraq according to providing medical services, supplying safe water, transporting materials and rebuilding infrastructure in areas where conflicts are not taking place or will not take place.