AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
Tokyo: Japan aims to revamp plans that spell out how its troops would work with the US military in the wake of a North Korean attack, hostilities in the Taiwan Strait and other emergencies, a report said Friday.
Now that negotiations with Washington on realigning US forces in Japan have wrapped up, Tokyo hopes to have more detailed cooperation plans, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said without citing sources.
The Japanese government is coordinating to have Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi propose the revisions to US President George W. Bush when they hold a summit meeting in late June, the economic daily said.
Japan has legislation on how to cope with armed attacks against itself or emergencies in surrounding areas but lacks details on cooperation with the US military.
Japan was now ready to draw up plans specifying which units would be deployed and goods to be transported, in addition to which roads, ports, airports and medical facilities were to be used, the paper said.
Emergency scenarios would include North Korean attacks on Japan, hostilities on the Korean Peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait, and terrorism and large natural disasters, it said.
Washington and Tokyo heralded a new era in military cooperation this week by adopting a roadmap for restructuring the US military presence in Japan at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.
They endorsed a package to implement an October 2005 accord for the realignment, which involved the relocation of a key US air base and troops from the southern Japanese island of Okinawa by 2014.
In the most sweeping reorganization of US troops and bases in Japan since the US military presence began at the end of World War II, the two nations would also improve their ballistic missile defense capabilities.
Tokyo has been in a hurry to build such a system with Washington since North Korea stunned the world in 1998 by firing a missile over the Japanese mainland into the Pacific.
