TOKYO, July 4: Japan’s powerful lower house of parliament gave the go-ahead for the nation’s biggest foreign troop deployment since World War Two on Friday, passing a law that allows the government to send soldiers to help rebuild Iraq.

The law, the latest in a series of steps boosting the military that critics say is undermining Japan’s pacifist constitution, paves the way for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to send about 1,000 troops to Iraq in the near future.

The bill is expected to become law later this month upon endorsement by parliament’s Upper House.

Critics, including some ruling party heavyweights, have raised their voice against the plan, saying it would violate the 1947 constitution which forbids the use of force to settle international conflicts except in self-defence.

In a protest against the bill and the parliament’s decision not to use named ballots, Hiromu Nonaka and Makoto Koga — powerful figures in Koizumi’s ruling party — walked out of the plenary session of the Lower House.

“This is a bill that could take the lives of Self-Defence Forces (military) personnel and kill and injure people of other nations,” Kyodo news agency quoted Nonaka as saying. “We should leave a clear record of which lawmakers voted for it and who voted against it.”

Koizumi and his cabinet ministers have insisted the troops will only be sent to areas “free of military conflict”.—Reuters