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jetdawgg
04-14-07, 09:21 AM
By Sachiko Sakamaki
April 13 (Bloomberg) -- Japan's lower house of parliament passed a bill creating rules for amending the nation's pacifist constitution, which hasn't been revised in its 60-year history.

The bill states that a constitutional amendment that passes both parliamentary chambers by a two-thirds vote be followed by a national referendum of eligible voters aged 18 or older. The upper house will probably take up the bill next month. Should it pass, the law won't go into effect until 2010.

The legislation is the first step in realizing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's goal of revising the constitution to allow Japan to assert itself militarily for the first time since the end of World War II. The document, written by U.S. occupation forces after Japan's defeat in 1945, renounces war as a sovereign right and forbids military forces.

Japan maintains a 240,000-strong Self-Defense Force that courts have ruled is legal over the objection of pacifist groups. Abe says the constitution is outdated as it forbids the right of collective self-defense -- to defend an ally that is attacked -- in a nuclear age riven by international terrorism.
Under the current constitution, Japan is ``incapable of adapting to the great changes taking place in the 21st century,'' Abe said on Jan. 26 in a parliamentary address.

`Assertive'

The prime minister pushed through a bill last year upgrading the defense agency to a ministry, part of what he has termed Japan's more ``assertive'' foreign policy.

Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party proposed in October 2005 removing the ban on keeping troops, and making the prime minister commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Opposition to changing the constitution within coalition partner New Komeito led to the proposed procedural bill not becoming law until 2010.

Opinion polls show that Japanese are ambivalent to constitutional change, and consider other issues more important. In a Yomiuri newspaper poll published on April 6, 46 percent of respondents supported revising the document, down 9 percent from last year, while 39 percent opposed, up 7 percent.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sachiko Sakamaki in Tokyo at ssakamaki1@bloomberg.net (ssakamaki1@bloomberg.net)


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aolh548NHpIg&refer=japan