Japan's most prominent opposition leader yesterday rebuffed an appeal by visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to maintain its support for the "war on terror" in Afghanistan, which has been unpopular here.
The opposition seized one house of parliament in elections last month following a raft of domestic scandals. It wants Japan to bring home its ships which refuel US and other warjets and vessels in the Indian Ocean.
"You don't have to follow the unilateral opinion of the United States," main opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa told Merkel in a meeting, as quoted by Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi, the opposition's shadow foreign minister.
Merkel has called for as many countries to take part in the "war on terror" as possible.
After meeting on Wednesday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Merkel said that the international community must "never give in to the threat of terror."
Germany is heavily involved in Afghanistan, where it has contributed some 3,000 troops to the NATO-led International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) and has six Tornado reconnaissance planes helping to spot Taliban hideouts.
"I am against the current ISAF deployment, although I would support a deployment clearly authorized by a decision of the United Nations," Ozawa told her, according to Yamaguchi.
Yamaguchi quoted Merkel as telling him: "If Japan is to play a greater role in the international community, it has to take greater responsibility."
Japan has been officially pacifist since its defeat in World War II, making all of its deployments overseas controversial.
Some 54.6 percent of Japanese voters oppose extending the Indian Ocean mission, said a survey of 1,000 voters released yesterday by the right-leaning newspaper Sankei Shimbun.
Abe, an outspoken conservative, has championed a stronger military role for Japan and revision of the US-imposed 1947 Constitution.
He said after Ozawa's rebuff of Merkel that he would continue to seek cooperation with the main opposition Democratic Party on extending the Indian Ocean mission.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS