Japan is to supply arms to UN peacekeepers for the first time, marking another step in its increasingly assertive foreign policy under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Under the plan, approved on Monday by the Cabinet Office, Japan is to provide South Korean forces in South Sudan with about 10,000 rounds of rifle ammunition without charge, to meet a shortage identified by troops deployed in the eastern state of Jonglei, where clashes bewteen rival factions have left at least 500 people dead and hundreds wounded.

Over the past 20 years, Japan has dispatched thousands of self-defence force and police personnel to UN missions in Cambodia, Mozambique, Timor-Leste and Haiti, while ranking as among the biggest donors to the UN’s peacekeeping budget. But it has never before supplied arms to the military of another country through the UN, said a government official.