After only little more than a month of discussion, the ruling coalition reached a formal agreement Friday on basic frameworks for security legislation that will allow the Self-Defense Forces to play a much greater role overseas and pave the way for the Abe administration to alter Japan's pacifist defense posture.

By clearing yet another hurdle, the administration is a step closer to legally loosening the constitutional constraints on the Self-Defense Forces, an effort that began with last July's landmark Cabinet decision to reinterpret war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution.

Based on the agreement, the administration will prepare bills to present to the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito in mid-April. It hopes to get the parties' nod and submit a package of more than 10 bills to the Diet by mid-May.

"I believe we have settled for what we can do at this stage," LDP Vice President Masahiko Komura, who has been chairing the LDP-Komeito talks.

The allies reached their seventh round on Friday.

Saying that more heated debate will be expected after seeing the actual bills, Komura said he will continue the talks "with the intention of reaching a good goal in the end."

Friday's deal included: creation of a permanent law enabling the government to dispatch SDF personnel overseas to provide logistic support to foreign militaries; revising a law to effectively remove a geographical limit on SDF activities; and allowing the SDF to rescue Japanese nationals caught in emergencies overseas — with limited use of weapons.

Some of the wording in the documents, however, was intentionally left ambiguous for matters in which differences remain between the LDP and Komeito, such as whether to make advance Diet approval absolutely mandatory when dispatching the SDF overseas on peacekeeping missions, and how to remain consistent with international law when dispatching troops.

Even though differences still remain, the LDP was able to conclude the talks — which were needed mainly to placate a Komeito leery of loosening the constitutional limits on the SDF — surprisingly quickly as the Buddhist-backed pacifist party wanted to avoid aggravating voters by dragging out the talks ahead of the nationwide local elections in April.

But deputy Komeito chief Kazuo Kitagawa repeatedly stressed that Friday's agreement is merely a summing up, and not a final agreement, apparently hoping to give the impression that the party did not roll over for the LDP.

Kitagawa said the final judgment will come after seeing the actual bills.

Komeito members also said they successfully got some constraints put in the framework, including three principles it proposed for dispatching the SDF overseas, including ensuring the safety of SDF personnel and gaining public support when sending troops overseas.

But Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University, said whatever wording is used in the joint document, it won't have much of an impact on the critical point of last July's Cabinet decision to let Japan exercise the right to collective self-defense, or coming to the aid of an ally under attack.

That is, the government will be the judge of whether the self-imposed conditions to exercise the right are met, including whether "there is a clear existential threat to Japan and people's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness could be fundamentally overturned."

"The Cabinet's decision last July was a sort of coup," Nakano said. "And there is no changing the fact that a limited number of people in the government will make the decision."