While a rocket attack that damaged a storage container at the Ground Self-Defense Force camp in Samawah, southern Iraq, on Monday rattled the government, Japan remained adamant that the area is still a noncombat zone and that the troops can stay.
"(The incident) does not immediately make us consider that Samawah and its vicinity no longer meet the conditions of a 'noncombat zone,' " Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told Tuesday's House of Representatives plenary session.
Under the special law that allows the Self-Defense Forces to be dispatched to Iraq, the troops can only be deployed to noncombat areas, in line with the war-renouncing Constitution.