Japan dispatches team to Kabul to consider medic role

Dec 6, 2010, 9:44 GMT

Tokyo - Japan sent a team to Kabul to check the safety and other conditions in the city to decide whether to dispatch medical officers from its Self-Defense Force as part of a NATO-led security mission, news reports said Monday.

The team from the Defence and Foreign Affairs ministries - led by Tetsuya Nishimoto, special adviser to Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa - is to look into the Afghan army's medical facilities and other related locations, unnamed government sources were quoted by Kyodo News as saying.

The members were also expected to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai while staying for several days, Kyodo reported.

After receiving reports from the team, Kitazawa is to make a decision on whether to dispatch a medical team of about 10 doctors and nurses, but he may send another inspection team if he deems it necessary, the sources were quoted by Kyodo as saying.

The officers were expected to join the NATO-commanded International Security Assistance Force, a multinational security force that has been deployed since 2001 under a UN mandate.

Japan dispatched 600 non-combat troops to Iraq in late 2003, its first foreign deployment since the end of World War II, to help rebuild the infrastructure in the war-torn country.

Critics firmly opposed the mission as a violation of the nation's war-renouncing constitution.

Japan had promoted greater Japanese military engagement abroad under the Liberal Democratic Party. The party was ousted from power by the Democratic Party of Japan in September 2009 elections.

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