Quit Iraq, say Japanese MPs

More members of Japan’s newly elected parliament believe Japanese troops should be withdrawn from Iraq when their mission expires in December than believe they should stay, a survey said today.

Of the 480 MPs who won seats in Parliament’s lower house in elections on Sunday, 41% said Japan should pull out its troops from Iraq, while 34% said the deployment should be extended, according to the survey by the nationwide newspaper Mainichi. The rest of the MPs did not specify an answer.

The lower house approved the dispatch in January 2004, backing Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on the issue despite strong public opposition. Koizumi argued that Japan – as an oil-dependent nation – should do its part to rebuild Iraq and combat terrorism, while supporting top ally Washington.

Koizumi’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party won a landslide victory in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, boosting its seats in the powerful lower house by nearly 20% and giving the ruling coalition a two-thirds majority.

Japan dispatched 600 troops to the southern Iraqi city of Samawah in January 2004 to aid US-led reconstruction efforts in Iraq. The mission expires on December 14, but Koizumi has not made clear whether he intends to extend it.

The Mainichi survey also showed that 70 MPs, or 15%, said Japan should consider possessing nuclear weapons “immediately” or “depending on the global climate,” while 81% said Japan should never consider such a possibility.

LDP members were the biggest supporters of the nuclear option, with 59, or 20%, of the 296 ruling party lawmakers backing the idea, Mainichi said.

The survey also found MPs split over Koizumi’s controversial visits to a Tokyo war shrine. One-third said the prime minister should refrain from further visits, nearly matching those who supported Koizumi’s visits.

Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine have worsened tensions with China and South Korea, which consider the site a glorification of Japan’s past wartime aggression. Koizumi has refused to say whether he will continue the visits.

The Mainichi sent questionnaires yesterday to all 480 lower house members, of whom 473 responded.