Increase in Foreign Players for 2006?

The only official mention of this that I saw was right after NPB officials met with the officials of KBO, CPBL, and CBL in mid-summer. It really came out of the blue, then didn't attract a headline since.

The Murakami Fund fiasco along with Rakuten's stake in TBS then took over the focus of the executive and owners meetings since the end of the season. Again, I didn't notice anything about the "Asia waku."

But then at the Konami Cup with the friend of mine who got the tickets, my friend said that it was already decided. I pointed out that there wasn't any mention in Nikkan Sports that I'd noticed (and I admit that I don't necessarily read every article). But he was quite sure it's official policy for 2006.

The 2006 version of the "Baseball Agreement" should be prepared some time in December here [Japan Professional Baseball Players Association - in Japanese]. Actually, the 2005 version seemed to take a little longer to finalize last year due to the merger, so we may have to wait until January for confirmation. That document will be the primary source once it's completed.

While I'm trusting enough in this friend that I'll accept his word, I don't expect everyone to. So I did a little Googling and found:

• Decision to Hold Divided Draft Finalized - July 20, 2005 - SpoNichi - The exemption of one Asian player from the foreign player limit was mentioned as one of three requests from the Players Association discussed at the meeting.
• Oh-kantoku Proposes Japan Take Leadership Role - November 13, 2005 - SpoNichi via Yahoo! News - While it's open to other interpretations, I translate the last sentence as saying that Oh-kantoku is in full agreement with the introduction of the Asian player exception.

These were the two most relavant links on the first page of search results. As you can see, still no official word of accepting this, so I can't say for sure right now.