DPJ policy chief Maehara seeks relaxing limits on SDF arms use abroad+

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 Kyodo -
Visiting Japanese ruling party policy chief Seiji Maehara called Wednesday for relaxing the country's stringent restrictions on the use of weapons by its Self-Defense Forces troops and also reviewing its arms export ban.
In a speech delivered on the first day of his three-day visit to Washington, Maehara said the SDF should be allowed to use weapons to counter an attack on other countries' troops with whom they are working in overseas missions such as peacekeeping operations.
He also said a review of Tokyo's arms embargo policy would enable the Japanese defense industry to take part in joint development of leading technologies and follow the trend of international technology innovation.
As chairman of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan's Policy Research Committee, Maehara has the power to influence the policies of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's administration launched Friday.
The SDF's actual participation in peace operations ''is still not enough compared to that of other major states,'' Maehara told the audience of experts on the Japan-U.S. security alliance, saying he was voicing his personal view.
''We need to solve legal issues. First, it is necessary to enable the SDF to defend other countries' military units operating with the SDF from imminent and unlawful infringement,'' he said.
Japan limits the use of arms overseas to situations essential to protect troops of other countries under SDF command in light of the pacifist Constitution, which it interprets as banning the use of force overseas as well as collective self-defense.
''Concerning the controversy on the use of weapons of the SDF, the questions of self-defense and collective self-defense also remain unsolved,'' Maehara said.
On Tokyo's almost blanket arms export ban, he said Japan ''must also review the three principles on arms exports,'' as the policy is called in Japan.
A ban on selling weapons to three types of countries -- communist states, those subject to an embargo under U.N. resolutions and parties involved in international conflicts -- was established in 1967 and then tightened into a virtually blanket ban in 1976. This, however, was relaxed to exempt the supply of weapons technology to the United States in 1983 and to pave the way for joint development and production of missile defense systems with other countries in 2004.
Through reviewing the principles, Japan can avoid ''the risk that the Japanese defense industry might be left behind in the trend of international technology innovation'' and can also ''hold down the price of equipment,'' the lawmaker said.
But he added, ''We must carefully examine to what extent we approve the transfer'' of equipment installed with Japanese technology to other countries with regard to joint development and production.
A politically sensitive issue, the previous DPJ-led administration of Prime Minister Naoto Kan dropped the idea of reviewing the ban when it updated the country's basic defense policy last December.
==Kyodo
2011-09-08 23:20:29