JAPAN: Japan should revise its pacifist, US-drafted constitution so the world's second biggest economy can play a greater security role abroad, the country's new foreign minister, Mr Nobutaka Machimura, said yesterday.
He also said Japan would not hold talks with North Korea on forging diplomatic ties unless Pyongyang responds "convincingly and sincerely" in a dispute over Japanese citizens Tokyo believes to have been abducted by North Korean agents decades ago.
Stressing that Japan has been engaged in non-combat peace-keeping abroad, he said it should become a permanent member on the UN Security Council with a bigger military role.
"I think we should revise the constitution in the sense that it is better to have a constitution with no ambiguity when Japan becomes a permanent member of the Security Council," Mr Machimura said in an interview yesterday.
Article Nine of Japan's constitution renounces the right to go to war and forbids a military, although it is interpreted as permitting forces for self-defence.
Japan's willingness to stretch the limits of the constitution and talk of its revision have sparked concern in China and other Asian countries that still harbour bitter memories of Tokyo's wartime aggression.