A member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said Friday that Japan should be free to join collective security measures when engaging in mine-sweeping operations, apparently contradicting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's position that Japan won't take part in the kind of collective security arrangement that characterized the 1991 Gulf War.
At the eighth round of coalition talks Friday, an LDP participant suggested that the draft statement on collective self-defense, which is being drawn up in case the Cabinet agrees to approve it, allow Japan to join an international mine-sweeping operation where combat is taking place, even when the action becomes a collective security military operation under a U.N. resolution.
Previous governments have said the war-renouncing Constitution prohibits Japan from participating in collective-security operations, which is why Japan did not join the coalition that waged the 1991 Gulf War. Abe upheld that notion at a press conference on May 15, the day a private panel released a report he commissioned on security matters.