Japan is seeking to extend tens of billions of yen in new loans to Iraq for building a water purification plant in Samawah, the first large-scale aid offered by Tokyo to the southern Iraqi city in about seven years. The new assistance to the city, where Japanese troops were stationed from 2004 to 2006 to help rebuild the war-torn country, is expected to help Iraq improve infrastructure despite its financial difficulties due to the rising costs of fighting the Islamic State and a steep decline in oil prices, government sources said. The Japanese government plans to step up talks with the Iraqi government with the aim of reaching a broad agreement on the project by the end of March. The security situation in Samawah is stable and expected to remain so, whereas some projects funded by Japan’s official development assistance in northern Iraq and other parts of the country have been effectively suspended due to advancing Islamic extremists, the sources said. The last large-scale Japanese assistance offered to the city was a thermal power plant completed in 2008. Samawah, the capital of Muthana province, remains less developed, and the sources say demand for a water treatment plant is high because it is the only provincial capital in the country with no full-fledged water purification facility. Under the plan, the plant is expected to use Japan’s leading water filtration technology to treat salty water taken from the Euphrates River. The plant will be capable of supplying more than 100,000 tons of drinking water daily, benefiting some 300,000 people living in the Samawah area, the sources said.