Japan sends troops to Nepal
Posted: 27 March 2007 1452 hrs

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/266624/1/.html

TOKYO : Japan on Tuesday deployed a handful of troops to Nepal to monitor the country's ceasefire, the first military mission since officially pacifist Tokyo created a full-fledged defence ministry.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet decided at a meeting to dispatch six soldiers to Nepal to observe arms control for a year, a defence ministry official said.

They will help monitor weapons and soldiers under the peace accord that ended the Himalayan kingdom's bloody decade-long Maoist insurgency. Japan is a major donor to Nepal.

Japan, which was forced by the United States to renounce its right to armed forces after World War II, has been slowly expanding its military operations overseas.

In January, Japan created a full-fledged defence ministry for the first time since 1945, upgrading the former Defence Agency which was lower in rank than cabinet-level ministries.

With the change, Abe's conservative government also listed overseas peacekeeping activities as a mission for Japan's military, which are known as the Self-Defence Forces.

Previously, deployments abroad had been considered "extraordinary," leading the government to seek parliamentary approval.

"This is the first time we will deploy the Self-Defence Force abroad since (peacekeeping) became one of the main missions for the troops," Defence Minister Fumio Kyuma told reporters.

"We have to pay careful attention to their security," he said.

In Japan's most prominent deployment, it sent some 600 troops to Iraq on a reconstruction mission. The soldiers returned last year without suffering any casualties or firing a shot.

- AFP/yy