A-bomb victims urge annulment of Japan-U.S. secret pacts+

HIROSHIMA, March 14 Kyodo -
Victims of the August 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and their supporters
urged the government Sunday to annul all secret pacts reached with the United
States on nuclear weapons and other issues.
They also said at a sit-in protest in a park close to ground zero in the first
city to suffer an atomic bombing that Japan's three non-nuclear principles of
not possessing, producing or allowing nuclear weapons on its territory must be
enshrined in law.
Masanobu Omori, the leader of a local chapter of the Japan Council against
Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, or Gensuikyo, said, ''The government has deceived
the public by insisting there were no secret pacts.''
The call followed the acknowledgement by a Foreign Ministry panel earlier this
month that secret pacts had been reached by Japan and the United States in the
Cold War era, leading Tokyo to end its decades-long official denial that any
such agreements existed.
With the panel confirming ''a tacit agreement'' that led Japan to allow U.S.
nuclear-armed vessels to visit Japanese ports, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada
said that while Japan's non-nuclear principles may have been violated in the
past, there is no such possibility now and Japan will uphold the principles.
The three non-nuclear principles of not producing, possessing or allowing
nuclear weapons on Japanese territory have been the bedrock of the nation's
policy on nuclear arms, but their legal status remains tenuous given that they
are only stipulated in a House of Representatives resolution passed in January
1971.
==Kyodo
2010-03-14 21:31:43