Japan Close to Final OK for Peacekeepers

Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa’s campaign for the legal authority to send noncombat Japanese troops overseas on a regular basis passed its biggest hurdle today.

After five consecutive early-morning sessions marked by obstructionist tactics by Socialists and Communists, the upper house of Parliament approved legislation that would let Japan send up to 2,000 troops overseas to take part in U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping operations. Such use of the military has been banned by the constitution since World War II, opponents of the legislation argued.

The 137 to 102 vote was announced at 1:57 a.m. A second bill to allow the use of Japanese troops for disaster relief overseas was then passed by a standing vote. The decisions appeared to guarantee final approval of the legislation, although another vote is required in the lower house. There, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party holds a majority.

The legislation “pulls Japan’s head from the sand of self-righteousness and self-satisfied ‘one-nation pacifism’ . . . to awaken the public to the basic need for Japan to fulfill its duty to the international community,” Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, Cabinet councilor on foreign affairs, declared in a written statement.

If passed by the lower house, the legislation will mark what a Foreign Ministry official called “a quantum leap” from 47 years of “low-profile” postwar diplomacy. Until the Persian Gulf War broke out in August, 1990, no postwar Japanese politician had ever proposed sending Japan’s so-called Self-Defense Forces overseas. Since then, however, Japan has found itself the object of criticism for contributing cash--$13 billion--but no personnel to the Gulf War effort.

In January, 1991, the government did approve the use of military cargo aircraft to transport refugees of the war but, when no one requested the planes, none were sent. In April, 1991, five minesweepers and a supply ship staffed by 511 sailors were sent to the Persian Gulf for a five-month tour to help clear Iraqi-laid mines. Both moves, however, were onetime measures.

In today’s vote, the Buddhist-backed Komei (Clean Government) Party, with 20 seats, and the middle-of-the-road Democratic Socialist Party, with 10, joined Miyazawa’s Liberal Democrats, who by themselves are 12 votes shy of a majority in the upper house.

Socialists and Communists opposed to the bills are expected to repeat their obstructionist tactics in the lower house. But ruling party leaders said that, if necessary, they are prepared to extend the current parliamentary session beyond its scheduled closing date of June 21 to get the bills enacted.

The legislation passed the lower house last December, but the Komei Party withdrew its support before the two bills could be put to a vote in the upper chamber. This time, after two months of inter-party negotiations and a series of amendments, both of the moderate opposition parties agreed to back the legislative package. The lower house must now vote on the amendments.

Socialists and Communists branded the legislation a violation of Article 9 of Japan’s postwar constitution, which bans the maintenance of armed forces and the use of force to settle international disputes.

Already, China and both North and South Korea have condemned the legislation as opening the door to the future use overseas of combat troops, charges that Nishimura rejected as “cynical complaints (made) for political reasons.”

In anticipation of the vote, President Bush has welcomed the legislation, and leaders of Cambodia, which Miyazawa has said will be the destination of the first Japanese troops to go abroad, have urged Japan to participate in the U.N. peacekeeping operation under way there.

The laws will come into force no later than three months after enactment, the Foreign Ministry official said.

Under one of the amendments to the bills, the government must seek Parliament’s consent for each dispatch of troops overseas.

Under the legislation, noncombat troops would be sent overseas only after Japan receives a U.N. request and wins the approval of the parties involved in any conflict. A cease-fire also must be in effect.

Election monitoring, local police work, civilian administration, medical care, refugee work, construction activities and provision of logistic support and communications for troops from other nations are among the permissible activities under the legislation.

The final test of perseverance over the bills began last Thursday when the Socialists and Communists staged 16 hours of obstructionist tactics before the bills were passed in an upper house committee early Friday.

Then, in three sessions of the full upper house--beginning after midnight Saturday, Sunday and Monday--the Socialists and Communists conducted a filibuster, Japanese-style, with each legislator “cow-walking”--moving with excruciating slowness and delaying tactics--to the rostrum to cast his or her ballot on three no-confidence motions.

After several of their members fell ill Monday, the Socialists agreed to withdraw five other no-confidence motions and go ahead with a vote on the two bills.