"The main troops will withdraw on March 10," the Defense Agency said in a statement, saying the region no longer needed emergency assistance.

Last members of the Japanese forces will return by March 16 after transferring their jobs to local officials, the agency said.

About 1,000 Japanese personnel on three ships were deployed to Indonesia and initially to Thailand for medical relief and the transport of supplies.

The deployment, Japan's biggest overseas mission since 1945, had been seen as a sign of its quest for a greater role in a region wary of its wartime aggression.

However, it only got going on January 24, nearly a month after the giant waves that have killed more than 295,000 people, most of them in Indonesia's Aceh province.

Task force spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Hiroji Yamashita said at the start of the deployment that the Japanese contingent would stay "maybe one to three months."

Foreign military operations have been winding down in Indonesia. The United States pulled out earlier this month the USS Abraham Lincoln which had been at the center of its aid mission.

Japan handed out 500 million dollars to United Nations agencies and governments of affected countries, making it the top donor to the tsunami relief effort in terms of money disbursed.

Japan has also stationed troops on a non-combat mission in Iraq, the first time since World War II that its military has been in a country at war.

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