Sudan 'too risky' for Japan
2005-04-06 11:15
Tokyo - Japan has decided Sudan is too risky for it to contribute to United Nations peacekeeping troops, ruling against a mission that would have marked a new breakthrough for the officially pacifist country, reports said on Wednesday.
Japan, which sent a team to Sudan last month to study a possible deployment, decided that security in the vast African country was uncertain and that Japan would be stretched thin in light of its mission in Iraq, Kyodo News said.
The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said on its website that Japan would instead send civilians such as diplomats to help the 10 000-strong Sudan peacekeeping force, which was approved by the UN Security Council on March 24.
The reports quoted unspecified government sources. There was no immediate official comment.
Japan had studied whether to send troops who would disarm combatants as part of the ceasefire ending Sudan's bloody 21-year north-south civil war, in a much riskier operation than Tokyo's previous peacekeeping missions.
Japan has been vying for a more prominent international role after decades of being seen primarily as an economic power. Japan has made winning a permanent seat on the UN Security Council a top foreign-policy goal.
Japan has about 600 troops in Iraq on a humanitarian mission in its first military deployment since 1945 to a country where there is active fighting.
After the December 26 tsunami disaster, Japan deployed a 950-member relief contingent to Indonesia in its largest overseas military assignment since it renounced the use of force following its World War II defeat.
Japanese troops have also taken part in UN peacekeeping operations in Cambodia, Mozambique, the Golan Heights and East Timor, but their activities were mostly confined to logistics such as transport.
UN Undersecretary General Jean-Marie Guehenno, who is in charge of peacekeeping, on a visit in early March encouraged Japan to be part of the Sudan mission, making clear Tokyo could participate by sending civilians.
The Sudan mission is aimed at shoring up a peace accord between the Arab-dominated government and southern rebels and gives no specific mandate to operate in the western region of Darfur, where more than 300 000 people have died in the last two years.