China threat: Analysts said a change to such a proactive security policy would touch off nerves in the region, especially among countries which were victims of Japan’s wartime atrocities, including South Korea and China. Military expert Maeda said that if Japan, along with the United States, were to strengthen its military capability, that in itself would increase chances of a conflict with China, which is already suspicious of Japan’s growing security ambitions.
Kyodo news agency said on Wednesday that the new defence outline would specify China as a threat, touching on possible conflicts in the East China Sea or over Taiwan. The potential for problems was graphically illustrated last week when a Chinese submarine intruded into Japanese waters. “The sub incident could be a precursor of a future confrontation pitting China against Japan and the United States,” Maeda said.
-Am
Japan aims for bigger role in defence
* Analysts say Tokyo’s security policy change will increase chances of conflict with China * Japan eyes constitution overhaul
TOKYO: Japan’s pending review of its defence policy will give its armed forces a greater role in global military cooperation and may cite China as a threat, changes that analysts say could heighten tensions in the region.
Many points of the review, the first since 1995, go beyond Tokyo’s long-held policy of limiting the military’s role in line with its pacifist constitution and may increase concerns among its Asian neighbours. “It signals a switch to possessing both offensive and defensive capabilities from purely a defensive posture,” said Tetsuo Maeda, a professor at Tokyo International University. “It will bring about new tensions and confrontation in East Asia,” added Maeda, an expert on military and security issues.
A draft of the new National Defence Programme Outline, shown to ruling party officials this week, calls for allowing more overseas deployment of its troops on non-combat missions.
Japan has sent around 550 troops to southern Iraq to take part in reconstruction and humanitarian work in its largest and riskiest overseas deployment since World War Two. The outline is expected to be approved by the cabinet later this month or in early December.
The draft also calls for easing restrictions on arms exports to allow Japanese firms to take part in a missile defence project being jointly studied with the United States. Japan has long imposed numerous constraints on its military capabilities, such as prohibiting the Self-Defence Force (SDF) - as the military is known - from fighting overseas and banning arms exports to avoid violating the pacifist constitution.
Article Nine of the postwar constitution renounces the right to go to war and forbids maintenance of a standing military, although it has been interpreted as permitting forces for self-defence.
Shigeru Ishiba, who served as defence minister until late September and was in charge of the policy review, said the new defence outline portends drastic changes to Japan’s security policy likely to take place in the coming years.
“In the next 10 years, I think that the foundations of Japan’s defence policy will change,” he told Reuters in an interview this week.
China threat: Analysts said a change to such a proactive security policy would touch off nerves in the region, especially among countries which were victims of Japan’s wartime atrocities, including South Korea and China. Military expert Maeda said that if Japan, along with the United States, were to strengthen its military capability, that in itself would increase chances of a conflict with China, which is already suspicious of Japan’s growing security ambitions.
Kyodo news agency said on Wednesday that the new defence outline would specify China as a threat, touching on possible conflicts in the East China Sea or over Taiwan. The potential for problems was graphically illustrated last week when a Chinese submarine intruded into Japanese waters. “The sub incident could be a precursor of a future confrontation pitting China against Japan and the United States,” Maeda said.
Constitution overhaul: Japan’s ruling party is eyeing an overhaul of the post-war constitution to allow the military to use force in international missions and let a woman ascend the throne, reports said Wednesday. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party plans to decide on the changes next month and announce a final draft in November 2005, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, citing party sources.
It would mark the first revision of the pacifist 1947 constitution imposed by the United States at the end of World War II, in which Japan renounced war and the right to maintain a military.
A constitutional revision would require a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of parliament and a majority in a public referendum.
A May poll by the Mainichi Shimbun showed 78 percent of lawmakers from both houses of parliament favored revising the constitution. The proposed draft allowing female succession would ease the burden on Crown Princess Masako, 40, a former career woman who has suffered a stress-induced illness since last December amid pressure to produce a male heir.
When she gave birth to daughter Princess Aiko in December 2001, it sparked a debate about overturning the ban on women heading the royal family, which has been in place since the Imperial Household Law of 1889. Before then there had been several Japanese female heads of the royal family. The reports said the revisions would also enshrine in the constitution the red sun “Hinomaru” as the national flag and “Kimigayo” as the national anthem. agencies
Japanese Official Calls for Occupying Island to Counter China
The second text states that Japanese officials believe China is conducting the surveys to create a map of the seabed for submarines and that China is perhaps claiming that Okinotori Island is just rocks to justify that it can continue its military surveys in waters near the island.
The isolated reef of Okino Tori-shima is south of the Daito Islands a small group of three islands some 300 kilometers east of Okinawa. http://www.thesea.org/index_ce_264.html
-Am
Japanese Official Calls for Occupying Island to Counter China
Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Japan should send people to live on Okinotori, an uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean, to bolster its claim to the area and counter a Chinese plan to survey the surrounding seabed, Shoichi Nakagawa, Japan's trade minister said.
``We have build up the island to make it habitable,' Nakagawa said on Fuji Television's `Hodo 2001' program.
The Chinese government says Okinotori, 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, isn't an island because it is almost fully submerged at high tide, meaning Japan's claim to an exclusive economic zone extending 200 nautical miles from the location is void. Japan, which has built a concrete platform around the rocks above sea level, has asked China to halt a marine survey near Okinotori.
Asia's two largest economies are at odds over islands in the East China Sea near possible undersea energy reserves. China is developing a gas field in the area and Japan is concerned its share of the fuel could be siphoned off.
Last month, the Japanese military went on alert and sent warships and aircraft to chase a Chinese nuclear submarine from waters near the disputed area. China later said the vessel entered Japanese territory by mistake.
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last month that the two nations needed to resolve the dispute over gas exploration.
At that meeting Wen said Koizumi should end his annual visits to a shrine in Tokyo, which China's says symbolizes Japan's past militarism because it includes convicted war criminals among the dead it honors.
Japan plans to lodge an official protest with China over its continued oceanographic surveying in Japan's exclusive economic zone around Okinotori Island, government sources said Sunday. Japan urged China at a working-level meeting in Beijing on April 22 to stop the surveys, but Chinese officials claimed the surrounding waters cannot be regarded as an exclusive economic zone "because Okinotori Island is not an island but rocks."
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, all marine scientific research in an exclusive economic zone is subject to the consent of the coastal state, which has sovereignty over natural resources and certain economic activities within a 200-nautical mile zone of its territory's coastline.
But the convention also stipulates that in most cases, coastal states are obliged to grant consent to other states when the marine research is to be conducted for peaceful purposes and fulfills specified criteria. It also stipulates that rocks that cannot independently sustain a settlement or economic activity will have no economic zone.
Japanese officials believe China is conducting the surveys to create a map of the seabed for submarines, the sources said.
"China is perhaps claiming that Okinotori Island is just rocks to justify that it can continue its military surveys in waters near the island," a Foreign Ministry source said.
The uninhabited island, also known as the Douglas Reef, is Japan's southernmost point, located 1,740 km south of Tokyo. It is surrounded by about 10 km of coral reefs. Two rocks on the island remain above sea level during full tide.
According to the sources, the Japanese government determined that Chinese marine survey vessels have committed Japanese exclusive economic zone violations in 19 cases in the Pacific Ocean since last year.
"About half of the cases were concentrated in the exclusive economic zone near Okinotori Island," a senior Foreign Ministry official said.
Japan plans to make it clear to China that Okinotori is naturally formed land that is Japanese territory and that it meets the conditions for classification as an island as stipulated under the U.N. convention, the sources said.
The Japan Times: May 10, 2004 (C) All rights reserved
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