Bush admn asks Japan to extend Iraq mission
8 Iraqi policemen killed in attacks
AFP, Reuters, Washington/ Ramadi
The United States has reportedly asked Japan to extend its humanitarian mission in Iraq, while President George W. Bush's campaign to stir more support was undermined by a suicide bomber who killed at least two US marines. Although Tokyo had not yet responded to the US request, a senior Japanese official was quoted by Kyodo News Saturday as saying an extension would be "inevitable" if US-led forces stayed in Iraq beyond December, when 600 Japanese troops were due to leave. But it is Japan's first military deployment since 1945 to a country at war, and government spokesman Hiroyuki Hosoda said that in the end, Tokyo would make its own decision. "Japan will not do things only because other countries ask us. We will make a decision independently," Hosoda told a political meeting Saturday. An extension would boost Bush's public relations campaign to raise support for the US-led war in Iraq, which was hit by the attack against US troops near Fallujah, a volatile Sunni-dominated city west of Baghdad. Meanwhile, visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari late Friday sought to ease sectarian concerns about the shape of Iraq's future government and denounced those who continued to foment violence against it. "There is a strong determination of the Iraqi people to succeed on this path," Jaafari said at a news conference. Earlier, the prime minister, who arrived Thursday in Washington, met with President George W. Bush and US congressional leaders to discuss the process of drafting a new Iraqi constitution, which must be finished by August 15. Voters are expected to evaluate it in a referendum by October 15 and choose a new government in December. Meanwhile, the bodies of eight Iraqi policemen, five Shia poultry vendors and a Shia Baghdad municipal official were found in three separate areas in and around the capital yesterday, said security sources and relatives. Gunmen attacked a police station near the city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, yesterday, killing eight police officers, a police chief said. Around 20 insurgents attacked the police station on a highway outside Ramadi, which is the capital of Anbar province, Brigadier General Shakir Mohammed Salih, the chief of police in Anbar, said. "Eight policemen were killed and one was wounded," he said.
| 
