Japan to send troops to Iraq in February-March

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, November 29, 2003

Japan to send troops to Iraq in February-March

Japan will dispatch some 550 ground troops to southern Iraq in four waves starting in early February and ending in late March, Kyodo News reported Saturday.

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Japan will dispatch some 550 ground troops to southern Iraq in four waves starting in early February and ending in late March, Kyodo News reported Saturday.

A draft basic plan on dispatching the Self-Defense Forces (SDF)to Iraq, which was obtained by Kyodo, also calls for sending Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF) C-130 cargo planes to Kuwait in mid-January to transport goods to and from Iraq.

The government plans to adopt the basic plan on the SDF deployment to help rebuild Iraq at a cabinet meeting by mid-December, and map out by the end of this year a detailed plan on when and where the dispatch will happen.

Before sending the planes, Japan will deploy an advance unit of some 10 ASDF members to Kuwait and Baghdad at the end of next month. The air corps will total 150 in the end, according to the draft.

Whether the envisaged steps will be approved by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the New Komeito party, remains uncertain, however, given the increasingly unstable security conditions in Iraq, Kyodo said.

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