Japanese Defends Offer to Fund Peacekeeping Unit in Cambodia

BANGKOK, Thailand — A Japanese spokesman Friday defended his country’s proposal to help finance an international peacekeeping unit in Cambodia in what would be Japan’s first support for military forces in Asia since the end of World War II.

Paying the costs “is political action, not military action,” Seiichi Kondo, a spokesman for Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a news conference at a meeting of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

“I think it (the Japanese proposal) is in line with the views of the United States and other countries,” Kondo added.

On Thursday, Japanese Foreign Minister Sosuke Uno unveiled to ASEAN officials a proposal for Japan to help finance whatever international peacekeeping force would be necessary to prevent skirmishes or civil war from breaking out in Cambodia. Vietnam has announced plans to withdraw the troops that have occupied Cambodia for the last 10 years.

In addition, Uno said his country would consider sending Japanese civilians to Cambodia as part of an international team to supervise election of a government to replace the Vietnamese-backed regime.

No details were provided, but a Japanese official suggested later that his country would probably pay “a fairly great amount” of the costs of the peacekeeping force.

The new initiative on Cambodia is part of a more generalized effort by Japan to translate its financial power into greater political and diplomatic influence, particularly in Asia.

“Japan . . . intends not only to expand its contributions in the economic field but also to embark on new forms of contribution in the political and diplomatic fields, with a view to finding solutions to regional conflicts and relaxing tensions,” the Japanese foreign minister told ASEAN officials Friday.

Earlier this year, Japan for the first time contributed to the U.N. peacekeeping force in the Middle East. It also sent personnel to the small U.N. unit monitoring the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

Most of Southeast Asia was occupied by Japanese forces during World War II. In meetings this week, Uno took care to reassure the nations of ASEAN--Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei--that Japan’s intentions are entirely peaceful.

“Although it has the second-largest economic capability in the Free World, Japan refuses to become a military power and maintains an exclusively defensive posture,” he said Friday.

Officials of other Asian countries seemed receptive to the Japanese initiative on Cambodia. At least in public, no one voiced any objections. U.S. officials made no public comment on the proposal.

Also on Friday, Secretary of State George P. Shultz met with Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk and reaffirmed U.S. support for him. Sihanouk leads a coalition of resistance groups seeking to overthrow the regime that Vietnam installed when it invaded Cambodia in late 1978.

Both in a news conference at the ASEAN meeting and in a private meeting here with Shultz, Sihanouk expressed skepticism that Vietnam really intends to pull its forces out of Cambodia, as it has said it will do by 1990.