Tokyo
Japan
will send a military vessel and two patrol planes to help protect
waterways in the Middle East but will not join a US-led coalition in the
region, the government said Friday.
The
move comes after attacks this year on tankers in the Gulf including a
Japanese tanker, as well as on Saudi Arabian oil installations.
Washington, other Western states and Saudi Arabia blame the attacks on Tehran, which denies any involvement.
Japan
will send a destroyer to the region for intelligence activities along
with two P3C patrol aircraft, chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga,
the top government spokesman, told reporters.
The
move is "Japan's own measure aimed at peace and stability in the Middle
East as well as ensuring safety of Japan-related vessels," Suga said,
noting that 90 percent of crude oil Tokyo imports were from the region.
Middle East tensions have soared since early
this year, when Iran was accused of attaching mines to several tankers
off Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and then attacking or
seizing others near the crucial Strait of Hormuz.
The United States formed a naval coalition to protect vessels in the region, which is critical to global oil supplies.
Britain
and Australia are the principal Western partners of the United States
to have agreed to send warships to escort commercial shipping in the
Gulf.
Most European countries have
declined to participate, fearful of undermining their efforts to save a
nuclear accord with Iran after the US withdrew last year.
The
Japanese patrol activities will not be deployed in the Strait of
Hormuz, through which much of the global oil trade passes and where the
US-led coalition operates, a defence ministry spokesman told AFP.
The
Self-Defense Forces (SDFs) will operate in the high seas in the Gulf of
Oman, the northern Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden, he said.
Japan's
post-World War II pacifist constitution commits it to strictly
defensive capabilities, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has campaigned for
years to amend it.
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