tokyo • A Japanese extreme left-wing group claimed responsibility yesterday for a small explosion near a US army base outside Tokyo ahead of US Vice-President Dick Cheney’s visit to Japan.
The group, calling itself the Revolutionary Army, said in a statement to media organisations here that the blast was an “angry blow of an iron hammer” at Washington’s plan to increase US troops in Iraq.
“It is an preemptive attack to stop Vice-President Cheney’s visit to Japan,” the statement added, attacking moves to strengthen the US-Japan military alliance.
Cheney is scheduled to arrive here next Tuesday on a three-day visit during which he is expected to tour the US naval base in nearby Yokosuka.
The Metropolitan Police Department said yesterday they thought the group was a faction of a militant left-wing group called Kakurokyo (The Revolutionary Workers’ Council), known for a series of attacks using crude home-made incendiary devices in protest at the US military presence in Iraq.
The explosion occurred near Camp Zama, some 25km west of Tokyo on Monday, injuring no one and causing no damage.
Police later found two steel cylinders at a nearby park and what was believed to be a fragment of a projectile 430 metres away. US television network ABC News had reported that the explosion could have been the first attempt by an al-Qaida terrorist cell to launch an attack in Japan.
ABC, quoting intelligence sources in Japan and Pakistan, said that Al-Qaeda had established a presence in Japan. Under the US military realignment plan, which the protesters criticised, the US Army’s command and control structure at Camp Zama will be reinforced.
More than 40,000 US troops are stationed across Japan, a key military ally of Washington.
Japan was a strong supporter of the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and took the landmark step of sending troops to Iraq. Japan’s last troops in Iraq returned home in July.
Meanwhile, two US F-22 stealth fighter planes arrived yesterday on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa in their first deployment overseas.
Two Raptors, the US Air Force’s most advanced fighters and said to be the most expensive fighter planes ever built, arrived at US Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, a photographer and a TV cameraman said.
The US Air Force said 10 other F22 Raptors were expected to land in Japan on Sunday, a week later than originally scheduled.
A US military spokesman earlier denied a report that the delay was due to a demand from North Korea during six-country talks on its nuclear arms programme in Beijing, which ended last Tuesday with an energy-for-arms deal. The US Air Force first cited “operational reasons” as the cause of the delay of the three-month deployment, then said it was because of software problems.
US Air Force General Ronald Keys said last month that the F-22 was combat-ready, rejecting a report by the Pentagon’s Office of Operational Test and Evaluation that said it was still not “operationally suitable” because its defensive avionics had response-time and threat-identification problems.
