Japan to send Afghan poll monitors
Kyodo News
Japan will send a three-member government team to monitor the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, the team's head said Friday.
"We've been supporting the political process, improvement of security and reconstruction in Afghanistan to establish peace (there) . . . the dispatch is our way of seeing that the election will be conducted in a free and fair manner," Hideki Ito, a Foreign Ministry official who will lead the mission, told reporters.
The team will leave for Afghanistan on Monday and stay there for about a week, said Ito, deputy head of the ministry's Middle Eastern and African Affairs Bureau.
The team plans to monitor the election in Kabul with Japanese diplomats there, Ito said.
Japan has contributed $13 million to the U.N. Development Program to aid the elections for a national assembly and provincial councils.