Another secret deal

February 21, 2014

Abe: It was ‘mistake’ to deny secret nuke pact with U.S.

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201402010028 

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the government should never have denied its secret agreement with Washington that allowed U.S. warships to bring nuclear weapons into Japan.

“I think it was a mistake to keep (the arrangement) from the public,” Abe told a Lower House Budget Committee meeting Jan. 31. “I want to show how the government thinks about this issue.”

Abe was responding to former Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, who said, “Successive prime ministers cannot make an excuse if they are criticized for having lied to the public.”

Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party denied the existence of such an arrangement during its nearly uninterrupted decades-long reign of power until 2009.

In 2010, an expert panel under the DPJ-led government said Tokyo and Washington had “a secret agreement in a broad sense” that allowed U.S. warships carrying nuclear weapons to call on Japanese ports or pass through Japanese territorial waters.