Japanese FM to visit Baghdad this week

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso may depart for Baghdad this week to become the first Japanese minister to visit Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, local media reported on Thursday.

According to a report of Kyodo News agency, the Japanese top diplomat may leave for Baghdad as early as Thursday morning to discuss Japan's reconstruction efforts in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah.

Aso would hold talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, said Japan's public broadcaster NHK.

Japan withdrew late July its last batch of 280 ground troops from Iraq, where it had stationed some 600 troops in Samawah for non-combat humanitarian and reconstruction missions since January 2004.

The deployment was Japan's first dispatch of troops to a country with ongoing fighting since the end of World War II. Altogether 5,500 Japanese troops had been dispatched in rotation to the war-torn Iraq.

Source: Xinhua