Sudan would welcome a contingent of troops that Japan might send on a demining and construction mission to the south of the country, a top aide to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said in an interview with Kyodo news agency on Tuesday. Nafie Ali Nafie is in Tokyo for talks with Japanese ministers, who want to take a higher profile role in the region ahead of a conference of African nations in Japan in May and the G8 summit on the northern island of Hokkaido in July. Nafie also urged the United States to lift sanctions on Sudan. He said that a census would go ahead in April and steps were in place to hold a general election in 2009 and a referendum on the proposed independence of the southern region in 2011, Kyodo said. Sudan’s foreign minister said last month he expected ties with Washington to be normalised within 4-6 months after more than a decade under US sanctions, but the U.S. State Department said there was no proposed new timetable for normalising ties. Media reports have said the Japanese government is considering dispatching troops to relatively peaceful southern Sudan as soon as June. Japan’s pacifist constitution limits the overseas activities of its troops, making it unlikely to deploy personnel to the conflict-ridden Darfur region. Nafie told Kyodo Japanese personnel would be welcomed, although he said the UN already had sufficient troops in the country. “But in principle, I think we have no problem in having the Japanese help to demine the southern area or to construct some facilities - roads, bridges or whatever,” Nafie told Kyodo. Japan is eager to take part in U.N. operations in Sudan in an effort to back up its long-running bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, Kyodo said.