Apr 23 09:43 PM US/EasternTOKYO, April 24 (AP) - (Kyodo) — A governing party panel on Defense Ministry reforms endorsed a set of proposals Thursday featuring the idea of appointing a Self- Defense Forces officer as an aide to the prime minister in a bid to strengthen the power of uniformed officers in the ministry.
The subcommittee under the Liberal Democratic Party's Research Commission on Security also proposed to upgrade the status of the chief of the ministry's Joint Staff Office and set up a command center under the SDF chief so the JSO chief can directly operate an SDF unit without going through the chiefs of the ground, maritime and air self- defense forces.
The ministry's Operational Policy Bureau, a key section that consists of bureaucrats, should be scrapped and the JSO, which currently comprises uniformed officers, should include civilian workers, the subcommittee said.
Former vice Defense Agency chief Yasukazu Hamada who heads the subcommittee told a press conference the set of proposals is chiefly aimed at speeding up the decision-making process in a possible emergency.
Hamada said, "I hope these proposals will be included" in a final government plan to reform the ministry which Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura's panel is trying to compile sometime around the end of June.
The subcommittee will present the proposals to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda as well as Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba after winning final approval in the party, Hamada said, without elaborating on the timing.
The ministry is trying to present its own proposal for its reorganization to the governmental panel on the issue next month, ministry official said.
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