Defense Minister Inada to Resign over Cover-Up Scandal

Tokyo, July 27 (Jiji Press)--Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada has decided to resign over the alleged cover-up of daily reports from Ground Self-Defense Force troops in the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, government sources said Thursday. Her resignation looks certain to deal an additional blow to the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has refused to dismiss her despite repeated requests from the opposition camp. The Defense Ministry is set to release the result of the special investigation by the Inspector General's Office of Legal Compliance into allegations of the cover-up, as well as punishments on senior officials, on Friday. Inada is expected to submit her resignation as early as Friday, and the prime minister is likely to accept it, the sources said. Inada would be the sixth minister to quit over scandals since the current Abe administration was launched in December 2012. Abe initially planned to replace Inada in a cabinet reshuffle expected for Aug. 3. But he has concluded that Inada has no choice but to resign now, amid increasing criticism over the cover-up scandal, the sources said. After her resignation, Abe or another member of his cabinet is expected to double as defense minister until Aug. 3, the sources said. Over the scandal, Vice Defense Minister Tetsuro Kuroe, the highest-ranking bureaucrat at the ministry, will also step down. Gen. Toshiya Okabe, chief of staff at the GSDF, has decided to resign. According to sources familiar with the situation, the government is poised to name Katashi Toyota, director-general of the defense minister's Secretariat, as new vice minister. In response to a freedom-of-information request in October last year, the GSDF said last December that it had discarded the daily logs of the activities by the GSDF engineering troops taking part in the U.N. mission in South Sudan. But it emerged in January this year that the logs were kept in electronic form within the GSDF. Kuroe, Okabe and others agreed in February this year that there was no need to disclose the data as they were stored personally and were not considered official documents. Regarding the investigation into the cover-up, the focal point is whether the probe report will recognize Inada's alleged involvement in the decision to keep the documents undisclosed. Speaking at parliament and elsewhere, Inada has repeatedly denied having approved any attempt to keep the documents undisclosed. The minister has also claimed that she has never been informed of the existence of the daily log data stored at the GSDF. But the GSDF insisted that it had told Inada about the existence of the data, during the questioning by the inspector general's office. END