SINGAPORE: Japan would not initiate any hostilities against North Korea, but is ready to defend itself, its defence minister said Saturday amid international tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada, speaking at a high-level security forum in Singapore, said Tokyo would be transparent with its military hardware purchases in order to prevent any misunderstanding with neighbours. "We have mentioned that North Korea is a threat because of what has happened in the past, but unless there are other countries moving to us, we will never start an action as such," Hamada told delegates at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue on security. "In Japan, we have various and numerous constraints and internationally, we have also made clear that we do not use force in order to resolve conflict situations," he said. He told the forum Tokyo was looking at a range of weapon procurements including the F-22 fifth-generation fighter aircraft, but stressed these were "only for the defence of the country as such."
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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