April 18 (Bloomberg) -- A Japanese court judge's opinion that airlifting missions in Iraq are unconstitutional won't affect the country's troop deployments, the government's top spokesman said.

The Nagoya High Court in central Japan yesterday ruled the government could continue its deployment of Air Self Defense Forces in Iraq, Kyodo News reported. Yet, as part of the ruling, Presiding Judge Kunio Aoyama issued an opinion stating that helping to airlift troops into a war zone violates the country's pacifist constitution, Kyodo said.

The opinion ``poses no problems to the continuation of the Air Self Defense Force's activities,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said.

Japan's government has a history of ignoring similar opinions given by judges, said Robert Dujarric, director of a Japan program at Temple University's Japan Campus. Politically, the judge's finding helps the Democratic Party of Japan, which has also argued such deployments are unconstitutional.

``The ruling will help the DPJ because they can say the law is on their side,'' he said. Japan suspended refueling missions in the Indian Ocean for four months when the DPJ, which controls the upper house, delayed talks on a bill to renew them last year.

More than a thousand people who oppose Japan's support of the Iraq war filed the class-action lawsuit in Nagoya in 2004.

The judge's opinion is ``deplorable'' and ``unnecessary to the ruling,'' the Yomiuri Shimbun cited Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba as saying in a press conference today.

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To contact the reporter on this story: Takashi Hirokawa in Tokyo at thirokawa@bloomberg.net; Toko Sekiguchi in Tokyo at Tsekiguchi3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 18, 2008 01:40 EDT