The Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) approved a bill yesterday to scale back support for US-led forces in Afghanistan, but the move was unlikely to placate the opposition, which wants to end the mission entirely.
Japanese vessels have refueled coalition aircraft and ships under a law, which expires on Nov. 1, allowing the officially pacifist country to take part in the "war on terror."
The ruling LDP approved a new bill to continue the mission, a party official said. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's Cabinet was due to give its formal backing later in the day to send the bill to parliament.
In a compromise, the new bill would allow Japan to give oil and water only to coalition forces directly involved in the "war on terror." It follows accusations, denied by Tokyo and Washington, that Japanese fuel was diverted to US operations in Iraq.
The new bill also authorizes the mission for only one year instead of two years, as originally planned.
But the opposition, which won control of parliament's less-powerful upper house in July, says that Japan should not be involved in "American wars."
Conservative Shinzo Abe resigned as prime minister last month, citing his failure to extend the mission. The opposition has also pledged to scuttle Fukuda's policy agenda until he calls early general elections.
The opposition has not officially rejected the compromise bill, saying it wants to debate the issue once the Cabinet approves it.
But Kenji Yamaoka, a senior lawmaker of the main opposition Democratic Party, attacked the new bill for eliminating a requirement that parliament approve the dispatch of every additional ship to the Indian Ocean.
"They eliminated the parliamentary approval because they don't want trouble in the upper house," Yamaoka told reporters. "It shows extreme ignorance about parliamentary debate."
The US has warned that relations would suffer with Japan unless its close ally renews the mission.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.