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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (29787)	10/8/2003 3:20:45 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Japanese ambassador fired after voicing dissent over US-led war on Iraq Wed Oct 8, 6:45 AM ET Add Mideast - ! TOKYO (AFP) - A veteran Japanese diplomat, who was the country's ambassador to Lebanon until August, said he was fired after expressing his opposition to the US-led war on Iraq (news - web sites) in two official telegrams. Naoto Amaki, 56, sent the first telegram directly addressed to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi six days before the US-led forces launched their attack on Iraq on March 20. "In that telegram, I said we should continue to exhaust all our diplomatic efforts so as to avoid the war...We must opppose the unilateral military action by the United States," Amaki told a news conference in Tokyo. But Koizumi's announcement of Japan's support for the war came just hours after the beginning of US airstrikes in Baghdad and Amaki, feeling angry at what he called "arrogant and inhuman" US military action, sent another telegram to Tokyo, urging Koizumi to do something to end the war. "I felt incredibly sad when I heard Koizumi saying Japan would give its support for post-war reconstruction efforts in Iraq at the very moment when people were really being killed," the former ambassador said Wednesday. "So I sent another telegram, saying the war should be stopped by diplomatic means and told Koizumi that his repeated remarks on Japan's support for the war were like rubbing salt into the wounds," he said. The foreign ministry's most senior bureaucrat, vice foreign minister Yukio Takeuchi sent Amaki a one-page letter, saying the ministry was going to undertake revitalization reforms to rejuvenate its diplomatic corps and it was time for him to take early retirement. "Takeuchi said to me I had overstepped the organisation's bounds and I would be unhappy if I stayed with the foreign ministry," said Amaki, who returned to Tokyo in the summer after completing his tour in Lebanon. The foreign ministry, for its part, has said Amaki's departure was part of the ministry's routine personnel reshuffle to promote younger diplomats. Amaki chose not to sue the government but wrote a book that bitterly criticizes the ministry's handling of Japan's diplomacy. "Japan's foreign policy has deteriorated to the point where it has become completely hollow and the alliance between bureaucrats at the ministry and politicians has become so corrupt," he said. The only solution to Japan's worsening foreign policy, Amaki said, was regime change here as well. "The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has become a semi-permanent administration. The deep-rooted alliance between bureaucrats and politicians will stay forever unless we have a political system to change our government," he said. Koizumi, who heads the LDP, is expected to dissolve the parliament on Friday, and a general election for powerful lower house seats is likely to take place in November. "It is my wish that LDP will lose (in the upcoming election)," Amaki said.