Japan plans to purchase offensive air-to-surface missiles to
counter North Korea's rising military threat, its defence minister said
on Friday, a move likely to stir debate over its decades-long pacifist
policy.
Itsunori Onodera said the ministry intends to
request a special budget for the fiscal year starting April 2018 to
purchase long-range cruise missiles deployed on fighter jets.
According
to local media, the ministry plans to buy JASSM and LRASM long-range,
air-to-ground missiles with a range of some 900 kilometres from US
firms.
It also plans to buy Joint Strike Missiles with a
range of some 500km from Norway's Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace, news
reports said.
The move will likely draw controversy as
Tokyo has long maintained an exclusively defence-oriented policy under
its pacifist constitution, which bans the use of force as a means of
settling international disputes.
But Onodera insisted his
ministry will continue to uphold the policy, telling reporters: “We
will introduce them as standoff missiles that allow us to deal with our
opponents from outside the range of threats.”
Japan's
military policy has been restricted to self-defence and relies heavily
on the US to attack enemy territory under the Japan-US security
alliance.
US President Donald Trump had caused
consternation during his White House campaign by suggesting allies such
as Japan need to do more to defend themselves, although since taking
office Trump and his diplomats have offered reassurances of support.
Earlier
this week, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament that North Korea's
missile tests were an “imminent threat” to Japan and talking to the
reclusive state was meaningless.
The upper house
unanimously adopted a resolution protesting against the North's firing
of an intercontinental ballistic missile that dropped into the sea
inside Japan's exclusive economic zone last week.
Global anxiety about North Korea has steadily risen this year, and
Washington last week called on other UN members to cut ties with
Pyongyang in order to squeeze the secretive regime.
The call, however, has fallen short of persuading key North Korean backers China and Russia to take steps to isolate the regime.