Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi sought international support in Japan on Thursday to restore peace and prosperity, and to reconstruct his country. Abadi co-hosted a meeting in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to discuss ways to improve public safety in Iraq while promoting the countrys sustainable economic development. Abe announced a 35 billion yen ($330 million) loan for irrigation projects in Iraq during talks with Abadi and pledged Japans continuing support. The conference was aimed at helping Iraq reconstruct by establishing a system to eliminate weapons held by many civilians. The goal is to create jobs, provide vocational training and motivate people to return to their ordinary lives, Japanese officials said. The Iraqi government in December announced the end of its operations against the militants. "We have fought the battle against terrorism with strong determination. Now we shift toward making the country safer and we are moving to an excellent level of development," Abadi told a joint news conference. Iraqi officials cited unemployment among youth and other vulnerable groups as a potential source of violent extremism, and said organizing vocational training appropriate for the labor market is a challenge. Japan hopes to contribute its expertise from a UN-led disarmament and demobilization project in Afghanistan that ended in 2006. Officials from 30 countries and international organizations attended the conference. "In order to improve public safety, development is essential and vice versa," Abe told the conference. "I propose international support for the Iraqi governments effort through a new approach that integrates security and development." Meanwhile, Abes government faced criticism on Thursday, after his defense minister said the army last year found activity logs from a 2004 to 2006 deployment to Iraq, but had failed to report them to his predecessor. The affair comes amid signs that declines in support for Abe might be bottoming out, with ratings of around 42 percent in two recent polls, after a suspected cronyism scandal and cover-up over the discounted sale of state-owed land. Poor ratings could hurt Abes chances of winning a third term as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in a September vote that would position him to be Japans longest ruling premier, so long as his coalition controls parliament. On Wednesday evening, Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera revealed that the Ground Self-Defense Force, as Japans army is known, had located the logs in March 2017 but failed to report them to his predecessor, Tomomi Inada, who had told parliament a month earlier that the records could not be found.