SDF must stop refueling activities for U.S. war ships: JCP

A Japanese Communist Party member of parliament on May 6 said that the Japanese Self-Defense Forces' recent refueling activities for the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk were in violation of the Constitution and other laws.

Koizumi Chikashi, JCP member of the House of Representatives, was referring to remarks that the Kitty Hawk's commander, Thomas A. Parker, made on the same day upon returning to its homeport at Yokosuka from its mission in the Persian Gulf.

Commander Parker reportedly expressed thanks to the Japanese government for its assistance, saying that the Kitty Hawk received 800,000 gallons of diesel oil from a Maritime Self-Defense Force ship via a U.S. tanker.

Koizumi Chikashi told Akahata: "The captain's statement can be interpreted as the United States' admission that the Japanese MSDF assisted in the Iraq war that was launched by the United States' preemptive attack. In the Diet, I have frequently pointed to the suspicion that fuel which MSDF ships supplied to a U.S. tanker may have been transmitted to U.S. warships in action during the war against Iraq in violation of the Special Measures Law Against Terrorism. "

Koizumi said that the Defense Agency Director General Ishiba Shigeru's explanation that Japanese MSDF ships were "only used for anti-terrorism operations" was a deception. "The MSDF must be ordered to stop its refueling activities now," he said.

The USS Kitty Hawk strike group which participated in the Iraq war consists of five vessels, including the aircraft-carrier, a missile cruise ship, and a missile destroyer.

Reportedly, the Kitty Hawk-borne aircraft made more than 5,000 sorties during the Iraq war, and the missile cruiser and the missile destroyer fired 70 Tomahawk cruise missiles. (end)