ID :
105665
Wed, 02/10/2010 - 00:28
Auther :

LEAD: Gov't views looking into ministry's secret funds as difficult

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TOKYO, Feb. 9 Kyodo -
(EDS: UPDATING WITH HATOYAMA'S QUOTES)
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said Tuesday that the government views
it as difficult to look into the diversion of the Foreign Ministry's
discretionary funds for use at the prime minister's office under previous
governments.
''We at the prime minister's office have no means to investigate it,'' Hirano
said at a news conference, adding that documents purportedly showing such a
diversion no longer exist.
The government acknowledged last week that the ministry's discretionary funds
had been used for diplomatic activities at the prime minister's office in the
past, and Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said such a use was ''not desirable.''
Hirano dismissed the possibility of interviewing his predecessors under
governments led by the Liberal Democratic Party, saying that doing so is
unlikely to produce any new evidence about the practice. ''I could ask them,
but I kind of know what answers they would give me,'' he said.
But Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said it is still important to inform the
public about what transpired under previous governments regarding the diversion
of funds.
''What I heard today (from Hirano) is that things like documents don't exist,''
Hatoyama told reporters in the evening. ''While I don't know how much can be
uncovered because it happened under previous governments, it is important for
people to know the truth to some degree.''
The acknowledgement by Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan-led government,
which swept to power last September, came after a lawmaker asked if the
government had confirmed that such diversions of funds took place in the past.
Previous LDP-led governments had denied that such diversions occurred. The
discretionary funds, aimed at financing classified activities such as
intelligence gathering, drew attention following a revelation in 2001 of misuse
involving a senior Foreign Ministry official.
==Kyodo
2010-02-09 23:52:48



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