Adding to the political showdown, parliament also decided to summon Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga, formerly the defence chief, over allegations of cozy ties with a scandal-tainted military contractor.

A committee of the upper house, which the opposition won in summer elections, passed a bill to end the air mission, which flies goods and personnel into Iraq on behalf of the US-led coalition and United Nations.

The full upper house is expected to approve the bill Wednesday, a parliamentary official said. But Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's coalition has already said it will override it through its control of the more powerful lower house.

"It is clear that the use of force against Iraq is illegitimate as weapons of mass destruction were not found," opposition lawmaker Keiichiro Asao told the upper house defence committee ahead of the bill's approval.

"The government bears grave responsibility for blindly following the United States based on inaccurate information," Asao said.

Japan's then premier Junichiro Koizumi, citing the threat of weapons of mass destruction, was one of the staunchest backers of US President George W. Bush's decision to invade Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Koizumi took the landmark step of sending troops to Iraq, the first time since World War II that Japan has deployed its military to a country where fighting was under way.

Amid deep unpopularity of Iraq operations around the world, Australian voters on Saturday ousted another close Bush ally, Prime Minister John Howard. The victorious Labor Party has promised to pull troops from Iraq.

In Japan, Koizumi withdrew the troops before leaving office last year. But he maintained the Kuwait-based air mission, which parliament extended until July 2008 shortly before the summer elections.

The Iraq mission was seen as more controversial at the time than Japan's naval mission providing fuel and other logistical support in the Indian Ocean to US-led forces in Afghanistan.

But legislation on the naval mission expired on November 1 and the ships returned due to a legislative deadlock.

The opposition has so far refused to consider Fukuda's proposal to restart the mission, saying officially pacifist Japan should not be part of "American wars."

The opposition has also vowed to first get to the bottom of a growing scandal over a former military contractor for Yamada Corp. who was recently arrested.

Another upper house committee decided to summon Nukaga to give sworn testimony Monday over allegations that he joined dinners with the contractor, Motonobu Miyazaki.

Nukaga, who headed Japan's Defence Agency from 2005 to 2006, has acknowledged playing golf with the contractor but denied any close relationship.

Takemasa Moriya, the former chief bureaucrat of the defence ministry, has admitted the contractor treated him to fine dining, gifts and more than 200 golf trips but has denied giving any favours in exchange.

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