Japan says bar high for sending warships to protect Gulf oil lane

A senior Japanese policy adviser said Sunday the threshold is "extremely high" for Tokyo to send its warships to help protect a shipping lane for oil in the Middle East, hours after US President Donald Trump's call for other countries to do so. "I regard the threshold as extremely high" for sending Japanese navy ships to the region under existing Japanese laws, Takayuki Kobayashi, the policy chief of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), said Sunday on the public broadcaster NHK's political debate programme.