The Hindu : Japan passes laws to counter armed attack

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 08, 2003

International

International

Japan passes laws to counter armed attack

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE June 7. Emergency bills on Japan's responses to any armed attack against it were on Friday adopted by the country's House of Councillors in Tokyo. With these bills having already received the approval of the other chamber of the Japanese Parliament, the new legislation was deemed to have been enacted for all practical purposes.

The measure, which is being viewed with a great deal of interest and even anxiety in several parts of the Asia Pacific region, has acquired a great deal of topicality in the present context of North Korea's nuclear brinkmanship and missile-development agenda. The new law, whose political and diplomatic genesis is traced to the worldwide sense of vulnerability as a fallout of the terrorist outrage in New York and Washington in 2001, is aimed at enhancing the role and relevance of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces in a manner said to be consistent with the pacifist Constitution of the post-imperial Japan.

Outlining the international significance of the emergency legislation, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said in Tokyo on Friday that the measure would help consolidate the country's security in a manner that would also "enhance the reliability of the Japan-U.S. security arrangements'' which were first fashioned in the context of the outcome of World War II and later updated to meet the changing perceptions of both Washington and Tokyo too. The Japanese official line is that the new legislation would indeed ``increase international trust and help strengthen the international order''. This, according to Tokyo, would be accomplished through Japan's observance of the international humanitarian law under the new enactment. Above all, the new measure would augment the transparency of Japan's actions in the event of any armed attack against it or any other emergency of a similar kind, it was underlined.

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