Japan's ruling bloc sent two senior lawmakers to Iraq Sunday on a fact-finding mission that comes days before Tokyo is expected to extend the Japanese military's humanitarian work there. The departure of Tsutomu Takebe, Liberal Democratic Party secretary-general, and Tetsuzo Fuyushiba, of the party's junior coalition partner, New Komeito Party, follows that of Defense Agency chief Yoshinori Ono, who arrived in Kuwait on Sunday and was to head to the Japanese military base at the southern Iraqi city of Samawah. Takebe and Fuyushiba didn't talk to reporters at Tokyo's Narita international airport before they boarded a British Airways flight to Kuwait. The high-profile visits to Samawah mark the government's last-ditch effort to show that it wouldn't endanger the lives of 550 Japanese troops there by extending their dispatch beyond a Dec. 14 deadline. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet is expected to reach a final decision later this week. The non-combat mission, launched early this year, is Japan's first military deployment to a combat zone since the end of World War II. On Sunday, Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said during an Asahi TV talk show that Japanese troops were likely to stay as long as another year, though he hinted that they may come home earlier if the Iraqi government can restore peace and quell an insurgency.
