Japan may boost military role in 'war on terror'

TOKYO, Thursday (AFP) Japan may send military planes and ships to assist the US-led "war on terror" and reconstruction missions, a report said Thursday, in what would be a new step away from Tokyo's post-World War II pacifism.

Japan and the United States are considering expanding the role of Japan's military to ease the burden on US forces in a plan on the realignment of US forces, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

The two countries want to conclude the interim report this month and aim to reach a final agreement early next year, the business daily quoted Pentagon and Japanese government officials as saying in a dispatch from Washington.

Japan and the United States are considering deploying Japan's P3C patrol planes and a destroyer equipped with Aegis naval weapons systems to spy on militants in anti-terrorist operations, it said.

Japanese forces would also provide large vessels to transport other countries' personnel or heavy machinery to nations rebuilding from war or natural disasters, the newspaper said.

The P3C planes would also head to disaster areas to provide information to US or other forces involved in rescue missions, it said. Japan renounced war in its 1947 constitution imposed by the United States after World War II. Moves away from its absolute pacifism have roused anger in China and South Korea, which Japan invaded in the 20th century. Under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a close ally of US President George W. Bush, Japan has raised its military profile.

Japan has some 600 troops in southern Iraq on a non-combat, post-war reconstruction mission in its first military deployment since 1945 to a country where there is fighting. On Tuesday, Japan renewed for one year its ship deployment to the Indian Ocean to help US forces in Afghanistan.

Japan also sent about 1,000 troops, its largest overseas mission since World War II, to Indonesia after December's devastating tsunami. No immediate comment was available on the report from Japan's Defense Agency.