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TOKYO: Japan’s defense minister said President
George W. Bush was wrong to invade Iraq and warned that Tokyo could
not automatically renew its air force mission to the war-torn
country.
The rebuke from one of
Washington’s closest foreign allies came hours after an embattled
Bush used his annual State of the Union address to plead for public
support to send more troops to Iraq.
“Mr. Bush went ahead in a
situation as if there were nuclear weapons, but I think that
decision was wrong,” Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said of the 2003
invasion.
Japan’s former Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi, a close friend of Bush, strongly supported the
invasion and took the landmark step of deploying Japanese troops to
Iraq.
Koizumi withdrew the troops last
year before leaving office. But Japan has continued to deploy its
air force, which hauls personnel and goods into Iraq for the US-led
coalition and the United Nations.
Kyuma said Japan had not decided
whether to extend the mission when it expires in July.
“We must look very carefully at
what the United Nations will continue to request from Japan. Just
because the US decided to reinforce troops does not mean that Japan
should do the same. It’s not so simple,” he said.
“What can Japan do to
reconstruct Iraq? Is it impossible without Japan’s Self-Defense
Forces? We must look at the overall assessment to give a final
decision,” he said.
“If it is necessary, we can
extend deployment,” he said. “If we think we can entrust
responsibility to the private sector, that is also possible.”
Japan, which was stripped of its
right to a military after defeat in World War II, calls its troops
the Self-Defense Forces.
--AFP
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