TOKYO, May 30 (Reuters) - Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Friday he would study whether to accept Japan's offer to send troops to his country for a non-combat mission. Al-Bashir said Japan had told Sudan that it wanted to send its troops to Sudan to help build infrastructure in the African nation. He said Japan had made it clear that its troops would not take part in U.N.-led peace-keeping operations. "We are going to study this offer," Al-Bashir told reporters in Tokyo. Japanese government officials told Reuters last week that Tokyo was in the final stages of deciding whether to send troops to southern Sudan. Japan has not announced if such a decision has been made. Tokyo is eager to take part in U.N. operations in Sudan in an effort to back up its long-running ambition to win a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council but Japan's pacifist constitution restricts its participation in military activities overseas and forbids the use of force to settle international disputes. One of the Japanese government officials said last week that Tokyo was studying various plans including the dispatch of several hundred soldiers to southern Sudan on a non-combat mission. But the officials said Japan would not send troops to the conflict-ridden Darfur region. International experts estimate that some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million been driven from their homes since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in Darfur in early 2003, charging the government in Khartoum with neglect. Al-Bashir urged Japanese companies to invest in Sudan. "We have a very stable economy. We would like to tell you that last year, 2007, we achieved an 11 percent rate of growth, which is considered to be highest in Africa and the Arabic world," he said. The Sudanese president is in Japan to attend a three-day Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in Yokohama, near Tokyo, which ended on Friday. He stressed that China and India had already made inroads into the African country. "We now have China, India, Indonesia...," he said. "I take this opportunity to call on all of the Japanese companies to come and invest in Sudan." Resource-poor Japan wants to play a higher-profile role in the resource-rich region ahead of the G8 summit on the northern island of Hokkaido in July. Earlier this month Japan pledged to extend $200 million in aid for Sudan in the next four years. (Reporting by Teruaki Ueno; Editing by Valerie Lee)
Local residents cross a makeshift bridge near a damaged house after a rainstorm in Kaili, Guizhou province May 30, 2008. Two more people were confirmed dead on Thursday as rainstorms continued ...
