A 30-member advance team of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) left Tokyo's Narita Airport Friday night for Iraq, amid opposition voices from lawmakers and peace activists across the country.  

The team will check the security situation in Iraq and prepare for the planned full deployment of 550 Japanese ground troops who will provide humanitarian and reconstruction assistance in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah.

It is scheduled to arrive in Kuwait on Saturday and travel overland to Samawah in late January. Some of the team members will return to Japan shortly to brief government leaders on the local situation.

If the government judges that the area is free of security problems, the core unit dispatch may start by the end of this month.

"The day we go into action has finally come. This is the start of our real operation," GSDF Chief of Staff Gen. Hajime Massaki said in an address to the advance troops in a send-off ceremony held Friday afternoon at the Defense Agency headquarters.

"I want you to fulfill your duties without dropping your guard up to the last moment," Massaki said.

Defense Agency Director General Shigeru Ishiba said: "I think the United States, our only ally to have promised to defend Japan in the event that we are attacked, is happy with us carrying out humanitarian assistance in Iraq in these difficult times."

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is also among the firm supporters to the ongoing plans of SDF dispatch. He agreed to finalize the departure date for the SDF core unit right after an analysis report made by the advance team.

But the SDF dispatch has been strongly criticized by officials from Koizumi's rival parties as well as peace activists among the public.

Katsuya Okada, secretary general of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan, criticized Koizumi for citing the need to cooperate with the international community as a reason for his cabinet's decision to send troops to Iraq.

"It is a blatant fallacy to say that international coordination is important in handling the Iraq issue. I think the only country that exists in the international community inside Koizumi's mind is the United States," Okada said at a press conference.

"International coordination in common-sense terms refers to a system for international coordination led by the United Nations," he said. The current problems in Iraq arose after the United States went against that principle and attacked Iraq, he said.

In front of the prime minister's office, some 50 members of a network of religious leaders promoting peace demanded the government stop sending the SDF to Iraq.

"You should not rob people of their lives. We don't wish for the SDF members to die either. We oppose the dispatch," Buddhist monks, Christian missionaries and ministers and priests called out while holding up banners and signs.

They then visited the nearby Cabinet Office and presented a petition with some 4,500 signatures opposing the SDF dispatch to Iraq.

Meanwhile, peace activists across Japan are planning to file a lawsuit against the state, possibly next month, to demand that it stop the SDF dispatch for what they say is mental distress resulting from being denied the right to live in peace.

Japan enacted a special law in July last year for the mission mandates that the deployment must be limited to noncombat zones.

Advance teams of Japan's Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF) are already deployed in Kuwait and Qatar. The main contingent of about160 ASDF troops is expected to head to Kuwait on Jan. 22, and three C-130 transport planes are to depart on Jan. 26.

The ASDF will airlift medical supplies, food and other goods for the coalition forces based in Kuwait.

(Xinhua News Agency January 17, 2004)