Ex-envoy says papers on Japan-U.S. secret pacts possibly dumped+

TOKYO, March 19 Kyodo -
A former Japanese Foreign Ministry senior official told the Diet Friday that
key documents related to the so-called Japan-U.S. secret pacts may have been
discarded before an administrative information disclosure law took effect in
2001, referring to what he heard from a person familiar with the inner workings
of the ministry.
During a Diet committee convened to question former Foreign Ministry treaties
bureau chief Kazuhiko Togo and three other witnesses over the Cold War-era
pacts, it was also highlighted that Japan once considered easing its three
non-nuclear principles because of a secret pact over the introduction of
nuclear weapons into Japan.
Japan has maintained the non-nuclear principles of not possessing, producing or
allowing nuclear weapons on its territory, but the secret nuclear pact
effectively led Japan to allow port calls by U.S. vessels carrying nuclear
weapons, according to a Foreign Ministry panel that recently issued a report on
the matter.
The three others who were summoned to the House of Representatives Foreign
Affairs Committee were Kunihiko Saito, a former vice foreign minister, Hajime
Morita, a former lower house member of the main opposition Liberal Democratic
Party, and former Mainichi Shimbun newspaper reporter Takichi Nishiyama.
Nishiyama was convicted of instigating a leak of state secrets after writing an
article in 1971 that suggested the existence of one of the pacts.
After the committee ended, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano expressed
regret over the suspicions that documents may have been discarded.
Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, meanwhile, told a separate press conference
that his ministry would look into the whereabouts of documents related to the
secret nuclear pact and other issues which Togo insists that he came across
while serving as the treaties bureau chief from 1998 to 1999.
During the day's committee meeting that lasted more than three hours, Togo said
he sorted through 58 such documents and turned them over to his successor,
Shotaro Yachi.
Togo also said he attached a list of the documents and a written opinion
calling for a review of the three non-nuclear principles. But he said that of
the 16 documents he felt were the most important, only half were among those
recently disclosed by the Foreign Ministry.
''I heard from a person familiar with the internal situation at the ministry
that related documents were discarded before the information disclosure law
took effect in 2001,'' he added.
Commenting on Togo's testimony, Okada said he believes the ministry ''has to
confirm what happened to the files'' which Togo referred.
Muneo Suzuki, who heads the Diet committee, told reporters later that he would
like to summon Yachi, former vice foreign minister, as a witness.
The list of documents and Togo's written opinion were also handed to Ichiro
Fujisaki, who at the time was serving as chief of the ministry's North American
affairs bureau, according to Togo. Fujisaki is now the Japanese ambassador to
the United States.
Meanwhile, Morita, who served as a secretary to the late Prime Minister
Masayoshi Ohira, said that in 1974 Ohira considered easing one of the
non-nuclear principles -- the principle of not allowing the introduction of
nuclear weapons into Japan -- when he was foreign minister.
Saito, for his part, said he had not been told about the nuclear pact by his
predecessor in the vice foreign minister's post and that he had not briefed the
prime minister on any such issue. Saito was the Foreign Ministry's top
bureaucrat from 1993 and 1995.
Their testimony came after the Foreign Ministry panel looked into a total of
four alleged Japan-U.S. secret pacts and confirmed the existence of three of
them, including the one on nuclear weapons that the panel said started to take
shape amid negotiations for the revision of the Japan-U.S. security treaty in
1960.
The existence of the four secret pacts had already been exposed through
declassified U.S. documents and testimonies of people involved. But the
Japanese government long denied the existence of any such pacts, before the
historic change of government last year led to an investigation into the
matter.
The panel also acknowledged a secret pact that allowed Washington to
immediately use U.S. military bases in Japan in the event of a contingency on
the Korean Peninsula as well as a pact covering cost burdens for the 1972
reversion of Okinawa to Japan from U.S. control.
Morita said at the committee meeting that he was involved in the cost burden
agreement during his career as a Finance Ministry official at the request of
the ministry.
Meanwhile, the ministry panel did not acknowledge the existence of a secret
pact, also allegedly agreed over the Okinawa reversion process, under which
Japan would allow Washington to bring nuclear weapons into Okinawa in times of
emergency.
This secret pact was allegedly reached despite an agreement between Japan and
the United States to remove nuclear weapons from the southern island prefecture
on the reversion of Okinawa.
Togo, however, was of the opinion that there was a secret pact over the issue
of bringing nuclear weapons into Okinawa, and Nishiyama also criticized the
panel's conclusion.
Nishiyama was convicted in the 1970s for urging a Foreign Ministry secretary to
hand over classified documents about the negotiation process behind the
reversion of Okinawa which included information on the cost burden agreement.
==Kyodo
2010-03-19 23:07:06