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29th August, 2008
TOKYO: Japan said Thursday it planned to extend a controversial mission backing the US-led “war on terror” in Afghanistan, a day after Taliban extremists killed a Japanese aid worker in the war-torn country.
The slain worker’s group withdrew staff and charged that Japan’s rising military profile may have been to blame for the death of agricultural specialist Kazuya Ito, 31, whose bullet-riddled body was found on Wednesday.
But the government said it would go ahead and submit legislation to keep ships in the Indian Ocean providing fuel to the US-led coalition.
The mission is set to expire in January. The opposition briefly forced a halt to the mission last year, arguing that Japan, officially pacifist since World War II, should not take part in “American wars.”
“Right now each country is increasing its efforts to counter terrorism and bring domestic stability,” chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura told a news conference.
“If Japan leaves the battle line, it would go completely against the moves of the international community,” he said. A total of 187 international soldiers and 25 aid workers have been killed this year.
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said that the killing had deepened Japan’s resolve to assist people suffering from poverty and regions embroiled in conflict.
“By helping those people and regions, we can carry the torch that Mr. Ito has passed to us,” Fukuda wrote in a weekly email.
The opposition, which controls the upper house, is expected again to oppose the refuelling mission when parliament reopens on September 12.
But the ruling coalition can override the opposition using its strong majority in the more powerful lower house.
Ito, the first Japanese aid worker to be killed since the Taliban’s fall from power in 2001, worked for Peshawar-kai, a non-governmental group whose head, doctor Tetsu Nakamura, has spent more than two decades in the region.
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