Staff Writer When the Diet was immersed in heated debate in 1992 over whether to send Self-Defense Forces troops to Cambodia for U.N. peacekeeping operations, Toshihiro Shimizu thought that something very important was missing from the discussions.
The focus of the debate, which pitted the then ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its allies against the opposition camp, was whether the possible use of force by SDF units engaged in peacekeeping activities is permitted under the Constitution, which bans the use of force as a means of settling international disputes.
"The debate over the Constitution is important, but there was no viewpoint concerning what was really needed in Cambodia," said Shimizu of the nongovernmental organization Japan International Volunteer Center.