Japan poised to ease constitution's limits on military

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By Linda Sieg and Antoni Slodkowski TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's cabinet was poised on Tuesday to end a ban that has kept the military from fighting abroad since World War Two, a major shift away from post-war pacifism and a victory for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but a move that will rile China. The move, seen by some as the biggest shift in defense policy since Japan set up its post-war armed forces exactly 60 years ago, would end a ban on exercising "collective self-defense" or aiding a friendly country under attack. "No matter how Abe glosses over it, he is dallying with the specter of war through a cheap scam but at the dear cost of the souls not only of his own but also of the entire Japanese nation," said an English language commentary by China's official Xinhua news agency. Long constrained by the pacifist post-war constitution, Japan's armed forces will gain an expanded range of military options, although the government would likely remain wary of putting boots on the ground in multilateral operations such as the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.




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