Tokyo will investigate a news report that its troops who just arrived in Iraq may become the target of terrorist attacks in the imminent future, the country’s defence chief said Tuesday. A convoy of Japanese soldiers, the vanguard of Tokyo’s first post-World War II deployment to a conflict zone, arrived at its base in Samawa, southern Iraq on Monday. "We will collect information on issues, including such a plot, as the advance team has arrived there," Defence Agency Director-General Shigeru Ishiba told a regular news conference when asked to comment on the report.
Jiji Press news agency, in a dispatch from Samawa on Tuesday, quoted "local security officers" as warning Japanese troopers at a security meeting held upon their arrival that they may be targeted by terrorists within a few days. The meeting was attended by the governor of Musanna Province, where Samawa is located, the head of provincial police and Dutch military officers, as well as chiefs of three dominant Islamic organisations, it said. Ishiba said the defence agency had not received "such detailed information", but added that Japan would seek any intelligence related to security threats, including information from the Dutch military. Jiji Press said the meeting participants reported that a string of terrorist attacks plotted by militant Islamic groups, including members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network and its supporters, had been uncovered recently in Samawa and elsewhere in Musanna Province. The provincial authorities are ready to beef up security in cooperation with Dutch military forces stationed in Samawa to secure the safety of the Japanese troops, it said. |