Koizumi Vows to Seek Wider Role for Troops
Japan Would Give U.S. Logistic Support

By Clay Chandler
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 20, 2001; Page A13

TOKYO, Sept. 19 -- Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi promised today to push through legislative changes that would permit Japanese troops to provide logistic support for a U.S.-led war on terrorism and play a far broader role in future international military operations than had previously been thought possible under the nation's pacifist constitution.

Under the proposed changes, Japanese soldiers would still be prohibited from participating in an anti-terrorism effort as armed combatants. But for the first time, members of Japan's Self-Defense Forces would be granted explicit authority to join as noncombatants in an overseas conflict involving the use of military force.

Koizumi's aides said the revisions would enable Japanese personnel to deliver supplies, offer medical assistance, provide transportation, regulate immigration, administer relief to refugees and perform a variety of other nonmilitary functions. It was unclear whether the new legislation would permit more hazardous duties such as gathering intelligence or defusing mines.

The measures, announced late this evening after a meeting of Koizumi's cabinet, reflect the maverick prime minister's personal conviction that Japan is morally obliged to contribute in a more direct way to the fight against terrorism than it did in the U.S.-led effort to expel Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's troops from Kuwait in 1991. In that conflict, Japan was widely criticized for sending the U.S. Treasury a $13 billion check to help defray expenses while declining to put its own citizens in harm's way.

Today's proposals also were designed to dispel mounting overseas perceptions that Japan is an indecisive and unreliable ally, incapable of rallying behind even its most important strategic and economic benefactor in the wake of a devastating tragedy.

"We want to provide maximum support to the United States, our ally, with the cooperation of the Japanese people," Koizumi said. "Japan would like to take an active role in the fight against terrorism."

Koizumi also offered to reward India and Pakistan for cooperating with U.S. counterterrorism efforts by granting the two nations emergency economic assistance. Koizumi did not discuss specific sums, but his pledge was regarded as symbolically significant because it would rescind an aid ban Japan imposed against both countries in 1998 to protest their nuclear tests.

In addition, Koizumi said Japan would contribute $10 million to families of people killed in the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Koizumi's show of support comes after a week of official dithering and mixed signals from Japan. While leaders of other nations have been swift to express their grief for the loss of U.S. lives, Japanese officials have remained largely silent. While key allies such as French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair promptly made arrangements to visit Washington, Koizumi's aides have equivocated."

In the past two days, however, there has been a mounting sense of concern that Japan might be, in the words of top Defense Agency official Katsuei Hirasawa, in danger of "being left behind" in the global fight against terrorism.

"Japan is required to take visible and concrete action," said Shunji Yanai, Japan's ambassador to the United States, after a meeting in Washington Tuesday with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. "The Japan-U.S. alliance is now being tested."

In parliamentary testimony today before unveiling his proposals, Koizumi argued that instead of waiting passively for specific demands for help from Washington as in times past, Japan had a duty to actively explore ways in which it might contribute.

The legal changes outlined by Koizumi tonight would go well beyond provisions of legislation enacted by the Japanese parliament in 1999, which granted Japan's Self-Defense Forces permission to support U.S. troops in a conflict "in areas surrounding Japan." It took Japanese lawmakers more than three years to agree on that vaguely worded revision.

The Japanese parliament's reluctance to endorse even modest enhancements in the role of the nation's military is a legacy of Japan's bloody imperial past, its postwar constitution and its delicate relations with the rest of Asia.