Minister denies having said Japan might need N-arms

Tokyo, Mar 9: Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso today (Mar 9, 2006) denied having said that Japan, the only nation to suffer an atomic bombing, should possess nuclear arms to counter North Korea.

Without specifying the sources, the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun wrote that Aso made the remarks in a meeting with US Vice President Dick Cheney in December.

''If North Korea carries on with its nuclear development, then Japan would have to have nuclear arms,'' the magazine quoted Aso as saying in the meeting which it said was held at Cheney's office in the White House on December. 2.

Aso, a candidate to succeed Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi when he steps down in September and who has in the past found himself in the hot seat with comments that upset China and South Korea, denied making the comments.

''There is no truth that such comments were made,'' he said in a statement released through his office.

The magazine also said Aso made similar remarks to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in their meeting the following day.

''If China and North Korea were to become a security threat, should (Japan) not arm itself with nuclear weapons,'' Aso was quoted as saying.

Senior Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Katsutoshi Kaneda also told a news conference today that Aso never made the remarks.

NUCLEAR BAN

But the magazine said senior foreign ministry officials who attended Aso's meetings in Washington, decided to treat the comments as though they were never made and did not include them in reports sent back to the ministry in Tokyo.

''If they were not put in the official reports, then it means that they did not exist,'' the magazine quoted a foreign ministry source as saying.

The source added that the officials instead decided to replace Aso's comments with remarks suggesting that Japanese public opinion may tolerate the country having nuclear weapons if North Korea continues with its nuclear programme.

As the only nation to have suffered attacks by atomic bombs, Japan has stuck to self-imposed ''three principles'' that ban the possession, production and import of nuclear arms, and politicians who even questioned the ban in the past were met with fierce criticism.

Former parliamentary Vice Defence Minister Shingo Nishimura resigned in 1999 after suggesting in a magazine interview that parliament should debate nuclear arms.

Yasuo Fukuda, a senior ruling lawmaker and seen as another candidate in the post-Koizumi race, also sparked a furore in 2002 with comments that touched on the possibility of Japan reviewing the nuclear ban.

Fukuda, who was the top government spokesman at the time, said he did not mean Japan could go nuclear and there was no chance the government then would revise the ban.

But faced with the threat of North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes, the nuclear taboo is easing among the public and more lawmakers now challenge the ban without receiving the disapproval they would have in the past.

REUTERS

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