Japan Boosts Funding for Gulf Effort : Aid: $2 billion is pledged for ‘front-line nations’ and more is added to the multinational effort. Some officials complain of bowing to the U.S.

Japan today announced that it will give Turkey, Jordan and Egypt $2 billion in aid and add $1 billion to its support for U.S.-led multinational forces in the Middle East to bring the total for those forces to $2 billion.

The increment in aid to the American-led forces was a clear response to mounting criticism of Japan in the U.S. Congress, while the announcement on aid to the three “front-line” Mideast countries, whose economies are suffering because of sanctions against Iraq, filled in a figure for a pledge that was announced Aug. 29.

In the August decision, Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu’s cabinet pledged $1-billion worth of non-military support for the U.S.-led military action against Iraq and said that would be the limit of its assistance for the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, 1991.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Misoji Sakamoto said that all of the $2 billion in support for the U.S.-led military forces and $600 million of the economic aid for Turkey, Jordan and Egypt will be provided during this fiscal year. The remaining $1.4 billion in aid to the three Middle East countries will be made available in fiscal 1991, he said.

After his Cabinet approved the new decision, Kaifu called President Bush to inform him of the decision to raise Japan’s total aid to $4 billion. Sakamoto said Bush thanked the prime minister and promised to “inform the American people of the contributions Japan was making.”

Kaifu, however, found himself bombarded with complaints from his own Cabinet. Several ministers, who were not identified, called the decision an “obey-the-United-States” policy, and complained that Japan should not engage in “deals” simply because the U.S. Congress was creating a “commotion.”

Foreign Minister Taro Nakayama denied reacting to American pressure. He said the additional measures were taken because Japan reached a decision that the Middle East confrontation would continue for a long period.

The action was the third since Aug. 5, when Kaifu’s government imposed economic sanctions on Iraq, including an embargo on oil imports from Iraq and occupied Kuwait. But it still left unresolved two major issues.

Kaifu himself said it was “not the end of Japan’s policy to make contributions to the Middle East.”

“We will continue to consider all forms of aid,” he said.

Announcing the initial aid package Aug. 29, Kaifu said his government would propose to Parliament a “United Nations Peace Cooperation Bill” to authorize the dispatch of personnel to overseas areas of conflict. But his government is still debating whether to allow Self Defense Forces to join overseas peacekeeping missions. And while Kaifu, before the gulf crisis erupted, promised to increase Japan’s $2.9-billion support of the annual $7.4-billion cost of stationing some 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan, no decision has yet been reached on that issue.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed by a 370-53 vote an amendment to a defense bill that called for Japan to pay the full costs, including salaries, of American troops based in Japan or face annual slashes of 5,000 a year in the forces deployed here. Earlier, the U.S. Senate had unanimously adopted a resolution condemning Japan’s support of the multinational Middle East effort as inadequate.

Sakamoto on Thursday reaffirmed that Japan is considering increasing its support to U.S. forces here but said the government considers that issue unrelated to the Mideast crisis.

Japan’s 1947 constitution bans the maintenance of armed forces to settle international disputes, but governments over the years have interpreted the charter as allowing the nation to maintain armed forces for self-defense within Japan’s territorial limits. To date, none of the nation’s 240,000-strong Self Defense Forces have been dispatched overseas for any peacekeeping effort.

The clear threat that Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait has presented to the supply of Japan’s oil imports, 70% of which come from the Middle East, has spurred calls from leaders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to permit the overseas dispatch of non-combat Self Defense Forces.

The new actions came one week after Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady met with Kaifu to ask Japan to boost its Middle East aid. The $2 billion in economic aid to the three “front-line nations” matched the figure that Brady requested, according to Sakamoto. But he called that result a “coincidence.”

What Brady requested in additional aid for the U.S.-led military forces was not reported.