(AFP) - Japan will never return to the militarist rule that led it to ruin in World War II, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said yesterday during a Southeast Asian tour.

"Japan will never again walk the path of a military power," Koizumi told Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad in talks here, according to a Japanese government official.

"I want to clarify that Japan's security role lies within the framework of the constitution," which bans Tokyo from waging war, Koizumi said.

Fears of Japan turning more belligerent have grown under Koizumi, who outraged many in Asia and beyond in August when he visited a shrine to Japan's war dead which venerates several war criminals.

Concern was also raised by Japan's decision to dispatch warships to the Indian Ocean to provide non-combat support for the US-led campaign in Afghanistan.

Dogged by protests

It was the first time since 1945 that Tokyo had authorised Japanese forces - which are officially limited to a self-defence role - to support US military action outside Japanese territory.

Koizumi was in Malaysia on the second leg of a five-nation swing through Southeast Asia that has already been dogged by protests.

Malaysian ethnic-Chinese groups demanded Tokyo repay millions of dollars seized from their community by the occupying Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.

On the first leg of the tour in Manila, about 50 anti-Japan demonstrators greeted a wreath-laying by Koizumi in a central park Wednesday.

"Never again will Filipinos accept Japan's new bid to establish itself as an imperialist power in the region," said a leaflet distributed by the leftists and women's activists at the site.