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Japan to join

UN peacekeaping

force in Golans

TOKYO: Japan will send troops to the Middle East for the first time in its history next year as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force in the Golan Heights, a Japanese Socialist party spokesman said on Friday.

After months of deliberations, the executive board of Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama's Socialists approved the plan on Friday to send Japanese army troops to the Golan Heights to replace a Canadian transport unit, the spokesman said.

Details of next February's dispatch will be formally announced at a cabinet meeting next Tuesday, he said.

The plan has been pushed by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), senior partners in Murayama's coalition government.

The Socialist party had been blocking it on grounds that it could violate the country's controversial 1992 Peacekeeping Operations Act, which does not allow Japanese troops to be used in "combat" roles, such as for separating warring factions.

Under a draft plan approved by the Socialists on Friday, Japanese troops will take on a limited transport role in the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF).

Japanese troops will not transport weapons or ammunition for troops of other countries, and will retain the right to withdraw at any time on orders from Tokyo rather than of UNDOF, the draft plan said.

Murayama is expected to inform leaders of Middle East countries of the plan next month when he tours the region. Although details have not been announced, Japanese media said he will visit Israel, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia from September 12 to 18.

During the 1990-91 Gulf War, Japan came under severe international criticism for not dispatching troops to the region, substituting lack of military contribution by contributing aid.

After the war, Japan sent a flotilla of minesweepers but this did not impress its allies, especially the United States.

As a result, the conservative LDP government at the time pushed through the controversial Peacekeeping Operations Act in 1992, overcoming strong pacifist opposition, especially from the Socialists. The two are now in an unwieldy alliance under Murayama along with the smaller conservative Sakigake party. Under the 1947 Constitution, Japan's armed forces, called the Self-Defence Forces, have been restricted to a purely defensive role, hence Japan's hesitation in sending troops abroad under any pretext.

It would be Japan's fourth such contribution to U.N. peacekeeping and refugee aid programmes since 1992, after Cambodia, Mozambique and Rwanda.-Reuter