By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
Political parties Tuesday expressed deep concern over the Japanese parliament's approval of a bill describing procedures for a referendum on the constitutional revision of its Constitution.
Suh Hae-suk, spokesperson of the pro-government Uri Party, urged Japan to stop the move to return to militarism.
She said the Japanese government has to show its sincerity to resolve key issues such as ``comfort women," instead of pursuing military power.
The main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) also expressed deep concern that the move will destabilize Northeast Asian securify.
A U.S. expert said North Korea's nuclear and missile tests are the core driving forces behind the rise of militarism in Japan and the strengthened U.S.-Japan military cooperation.
Robert Einhorn, senior adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CISI), said during the Seoul-Washington Forum in Seoul Monday, that the missile and nuclear tests last year have motivated Japan to rewrite the Constitution.
``The Chinese saw Pyongyang's behavior as leading to accelerated efforts in Tokyo to remove constitutional restrictions on Japanese military activities and stepped up U.S.-Japanese missile defense cooperation,'' he said.
Einhorn said the security threat posed by the North has made China discontent because the vulnerable security environment in Northeast Asia is working against the rise of China as an economic power.
The threat also heightened the level of military competition among countries in the region, he said.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan needs to seek a military power to increase its role in the global community through peacekeeping operations and cooperation with the U.S.
Abe and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have been actively pursuing constitutional revision.
Even before Abe's inauguration, many discussions had taken place inside Japan over the last decade, about its need for changing the Constitution.
One of these occurred in 2005.
In February that year, former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone said the Japanese parliament discussed revising the Constitution by 2008.
Tomohiko Taniguchi, a former fellow at the U.S. Brookings Institute, has said that the LDP and the Democratic Party of Japan are two core forces that have driven the revision initiative.
He said that for Japan's rearmament, Article 9 of the pacifist Constitution that restricts the government from seeking militarism needs to be changed.
Under the bill passed Monday, a referendum would take place after 2010. Constitutional revision needs approval by a majority of voters through a referendum.