Noncombat Role Abroad OKd for Japanese Troops

Ending a struggle that began 21 months ago during the Persian Gulf War, Japan’s Parliament gave final approval Monday to sending noncombat troops overseas for disaster relief and U.N. peacekeeping missions.

The vote, 329-17, came after nearly four days of obstructionist tactics in the lower house, where all 137 Socialists and four members of the splinter Social Democratic Federation boycotted the proceedings.

Communists, who like the Socialists insist that Japan’s postwar constitution bans sending troops overseas for any purpose, protested the vote by “cow-walking”--shuffling with exaggerated slowness and employing other delaying tactics--to the rostrum to cast their votes. They prolonged balloting by 87 minutes.

The final vote heralds the end of a 47-year period during which a Japan shaken by its defeat in World War II stayed uninvolved in international military disputes. The Socialists and Communists at home, and Asian nations victimized by Japan’s past aggression, said it was a first step toward a resurgence of Japanese militarism.

Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and supporters of the peacekeeping bill called it a new dimension to Japan’s “international contributions,” which Secretary of State James A. Baker III criticized last November as “checkbook diplomacy.” Japan contributed $13 billion to the Gulf War effort but sent no personnel.

Leaders of both the Buddhist-backed Komei (Clean Government) Party and the Democratic Socialist Party, which joined the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to pass the legislation, condemned the Socialists for refusing to accept the decision of the majority.

Before their boycott, all Socialist members of Parliament’s lower house submitted their resignations, hoping to force a dissolution of the body and a general election. But Lower House Speaker Yoshio Sakurauchi refused to schedule a vote to approve the resignations.

The lower house had approved the legislation last December, but Parliament’s upper house, where the governing Liberal Democrats do not have a majority, amended the two bills--one for peacekeeping and the other for disaster relief--before passing them last Tuesday.

Under a compromise to secure the support of the Komei and the Democratic Socialist parties, the Liberal Democrats agreed to drop from the bills language permitting Japanese military units to clear mines or to engage in armed missions that would bring them into direct contact with parties in conflict. Individual troops, however, will be allowed to participate in such activities.

The amendments created the need for Monday’s final vote in the lower house.

Passage only six days before the current session of Parliament ends rang down the curtain on a campaign that began in October, 1990, when the government of former Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu submitted to Parliament a “United Nations peace cooperation bill.” After that effort died for lack of support in the upper house, new bills were submitted last Sept. 19.

The new legislation marks the first time since 1945 that a framework for the regular use of of noncombat troops overseas has been established.

The new law requires that an effective cease-fire be in place and that all parties to a dispute approve Japan’s participation in peacekeeping activities.

The law also limits the number of military personnel sent overseas for peacekeeping and relief work to a total of 2,000 at any one time. Only rear echelon military support, such as provision of transportation and communication facilities, and civilian tasks, including construction work, medical services and election-monitoring, will be undertaken.

Shigeru Hatakeyama, a senior official of the Defense Agency, described the legislation in an interview as “just a step on the way--not the goal--in . . . a process of changing Japan’s contributions to the world.”

Hatakeyama, who said passage of the law was of “very big” historical significance, predicted that a successful performance in Cambodia, which is likely to be the first test of the new powers, would lead to support for Japanese troops being involved in front-line, as well as rear-echelon, peacekeeping operations.

Enactment of the bills gives a boost to Miyazawa, whose own standing within his party had been on the firing line. He had been criticized for remaining aloof and allowing the bills to fail to win upper house approval last December. Recent opinion polls revealed a recovery to more than 30% in popular support for the prime minister after a plunge to as low as 20% early this year.

The parliamentary struggle also promises to influence a key election for the upper house next month. Acrimony over the bills has driven a wedge between the Socialists, on one hand, and the Komei Party and the Democratic Socialists, on the other, in efforts that the three parties had been making to field joint candidates against the Liberal Democrats.