 Opposition parties in Diet call for Iraq Dispatch Law to be foiled The three opposition parties - Japanese Communist, Democratic, and Social Democratic parties - jointly submitted a bill calling for the Special Measures Bill on Dispatching the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq to be repealed. At the House of Representatives Special Committee on Iraq meeting on December 1, the opposition parties denounced the United States for the massacre in Fallujah and demanded that the SDF troops dispatched to Samawah be immediately withdrawn. Kokuta Keiji (JCP) stated, "If the Japanese government decides to continue deploying the SDF to Iraq, it will make Japan an accomplice in the U.S. war of aggression against Iraq." "Now that the Iraq war violates the United Nations Charter, the dispatch of Japanese troops to Iraq is in contravention of the Japanese Constitution. The government says that Samawah is a 'non-combat area' and in conformity with the law, which is not true. The SDF must immediately withdraw from Iraq," Kokuta said. Kokuta urged the government to stop responding to U.S. request for continued SDF deployment and carry out non-military assistance in Iraq's reconstruction because Japan is a country with the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution. The opposition parties brought in a motion to get their bill voted on, but it was turned down by the majority opposition of the Liberal Democratic and Komei parties. (end) |