Japan Conference Addresses Middle East.

From July 26 to 28, 2003, the 33rd annual Zenko Conference was held in Shiga Kogen, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Zenko is the abbreviated name of the Japanese National Assembly for Peace and Democracy, which this year hosted, at the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics, about 1,000 conference attendees from Japan, the Philippines, Korea, Great Britain, and the U.S. Having been involved for several years in a grassroots movement for an International Criminal Tribunal on Afghanistan (ICTA), the conference resolved this year to call for a similar tribunal for Iraq (ICTI). Another issue of concern to the Zenko conference was a planned new American military base to be built off the shore of Okinawa, Japan, already home to a large U.S. naval base. The Zenko conference also stressed the importance of action against corporations that were funding or benefiting from the war on Iraq.