"If they will be integrated into military operations, then it is another matter, but if that is not the case, there is no legal problem," Senior Vice Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters.

"There is a need to get as many countries involved as possible in the reconstruction of Iraq," Motegi said, noting that Japan's decision over whether to participate in the interim government depended partially on its makeup.

Garner, the 64-year-old "governor-in-waiting," is currently in Kuwait as head of the US Defence Department's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq (ORHA).

The body is to oversee the delivery of humanitarian aid and restore basic services while coalition forces gain control over all of Iraq, US Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

Once basic services are running again, ORHA would turn over the country's administration to the Iraqi Interim Authority, made up of a broad spectrum of Iraqis, he said.

Japan's participation in ORHA depended on such factors as how international it would be, which countries would participate and whether it could separate its military and civilian functions, Motegi said.

Japan is prevented from being involved in military operations because of its pacifist constitution.

Jiro Okuyama, director of the international press section at the foreign ministry, declined to say whether Japan had received a request for staff, but said the nation's embassy in Kuwait had "day to day frequent contact" with ORHA officials.

He said Japan had not ruled out participating even if ORHA remained a solely US operation, nor did he specify the numbers of staff in question.

"We can't say two or three or four or six or 400 or 700," he said. "The decision is not even taken as to whether or not we send somebody, because we don't know what the organisation will be like."

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi and her German counterpart Joschka Fischer on Thursday called for a new UN resolution to underpin international cooperation to rebuild postwar Iraq after talks in Berlin.

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