The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Tokyo

Japan's opposition-ruled upper house voted Wednesday to end the country's air mission to Iraq, but the bill was expected to be overridden by the lower chamber of the divided parliament. Adding to the political heat, prosecutors arrested the former top bureaucrat of the defence ministry on bribery allegations in a growing scandal which has touched a minister in Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's two-month-old cabinet.

The opposition has accused Fukuda and his conservative predecessors of blindly following the United States into Iraq and opposes Japan's Kuwait-based air mission which flies goods and supplies into the war-torn country.

The upper house, where the opposition wrested control in July elections, voted 133 to 103 in a party-line vote to terminate the Iraq mission, which has been unpopular with the public.