LDP claims it's not seeking to expand SDF activities through constitutional change

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party will not seek to expand the activities of the Self-Defense Forces through a possible revision of war-renouncing Article 9, according to the head of the LDP's constitutional reform panel.

"We will clearly state the existence of the Self-Defense Forces without changing an inch of the current government's interpretation" of the Constitution's war-renouncing article, Okiharu Yasuoka said Monday at a meeting of the reform panel.

Pushing the first-ever amendment of the Constitution, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed in May that the SDF be stated explicitly in Article 9, while keeping intact the existing two paragraphs that renounce war and abjure the right to maintain military forces and other war potential.