As Japan prepares to send noncombat military personnel to Iraq to help rebuild a war-torn country gripped by creeping insurgency, some Iraqis have warned the Japanese troops could become targets of attacks by insurgents.
"It is risky for the Japanese troops to be stationed here," Hassan al-Najjar, assistant dean of the Media College in Baghdad University, told Kyodo News in an interview.
Al-Najjar said resistance groups loyal to deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein have vowed to fight any foreign troops in the country.
"They consider all foreign troops -- whether Japanese, Poles, Czechs or Spanish -- as occupiers," he said.