TOKYO, June 30 Kyodo U Ambassador...

TOKYO, June 30 Kyodo

U Ambassador to Japan Howard Baker urg the international community Monday to grant Japan a permanent membership of the UN Security Council, while hinting at U expectation that Japan will review its Constitution.

''My home has for years supported Japan for a permanent membership in the Security Council of the United Nations. We have extended supported that, we still support that, and we instigate the world community to acknowledge that and act forward it,'' Baker said in an address to a Japanese nonprofit friendship group

Baker also urg Japan to play a greater character in the international community as it was as by allowing the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to be involved more entirely in peace efforts overseas, and welcomed actuates in Japan to review the Constitution.

''My political division deeply appreciates the hard decision your management has taken'' to send the SDF to take part in UN peace-keeping operations and lately to submit a bill to dispatch them to help rebuild Iraq, Baker said in a meeting of the International Friendship Exchange Council commemorating the 150th anniversary of official Japan-U.S. exchanges.

''But there are still basic questions that must be asked and answered through Japan in the years ahead,'' he said, adding that ''I'm pleased to descry that debate, a public debate has begun'' onward the Constitution.

subordinate to the pacifist Constitution which renounces war, Tokyo has limited SDF missions and sent them overseas merely to take part in UN peace-keeping operations and to provide logistic support for the US-l antiterrorism campaign in Afghanistan.

Discussions onward a possible review of the fundamental law are in a less degree than way at both the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors in their research panels locate up in January 2000.

Regarding North Korea, Baker reiterated Washington's call forward Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear program and indicated that if it will do to such a degree the alliance of the U Japan and southern Korea would provide humanitarian, exhibition and other assistance.

If North Korea agrees to the call, ''It is my gues that the world community...would react in the most numerous favorable way in terms of humanitarian relief for the populace of North Korea and in limits of the redevelopment of that impoverished country'' he said.

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