Japan-U.S. nuke accord kept secret from all but few PMs: ex-Vice FMs+

TOKYO, May 31 Kyodo -
A secret accord between Japan and the United States regarding the handling of
nuclear weapons has been controlled by top Foreign Ministry officials and only
a handful of prime ministers and foreign ministers were informed of the fact,
four former top ministry officials recently told Kyodo News.

All of the four served as vice foreign minister, the top bureaucratic post at
the ministry. A limited number of former premiers who had been told of the
secret pact include Ryutaro Hashimoto and Keizo Obuchi, they said.
In revising the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in 1960, the two allies also
exchanged a secret agreement under which Tokyo would give tacit approval on the
stopover of U.S. military aircraft or vessels carrying nuclear weapons.
Although the secret deal itself has already become known to the public by
declassification of U.S. diplomatic documents in the late 1990s, the Japanese
government, which has stuck to three nonnuclear principles, has consistently
denied the existence of such a secret deal between the two countries.
It is the first time for the four former top bureaucrats at the Foreign
Ministry who were involved in the handling of the secret accord to admit that
some prime ministers and foreign ministers knew about it.
The revelation by the four may shatter the government's longstanding position
on the matter and require it to be held accountable to the public.
The bilateral security treaty stipulates that the United States needs to hold a
prior consultation with Japan to bring nuclear weapons into Japanese territory.
When the security pact was revised, Washington construed that such a
requirement should only apply to the deployment of nuclear weapons on land and
stopovers of aircraft and vessels with such weapons were not bound by prior
consultation, the former top ministry officials said.
The administration of then Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, who inked the revised
security pact, acquiesced to the U.S. interpretation.
However, the administration of Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda told the Diet that
stopovers of U.S. military vessels with nuclear weapons are subject to a prior
consultation with the Japanese government.
Fearing that the secret deal on nuclear weapons might be ruined, then U.S.
Ambassador to Japan Edwin Reischauer met with then Foreign Minister Masayoshi
Ohira in April 1963 and asked for confirmation of the U.S. interpretation on
stopovers.
Although Ohira knew about the secret pact for the first time by the
ambassador's request, the foreign minister approved the deal with the U.S.
interpretation.
According to the four former top Foreign Ministry officials, these diplomatic
exchanges and processes were recorded in Japanese in the ministry's in-house
document and have been controlled by the North American Affairs Bureau and then
Treaties Bureau -- now the International Legal Affairs Bureau.
One of the four told Kyodo News he saw the documents and handed down the matter
to his successor. ''It was a great secret,'' he said.
Another of the four said the Foreign Ministry only informed politicians who the
ministry saw as trustworthy, which included Hashimoto and Obuchi.
Another of the four also said that Foreign Ministry officials had decided who
among prime ministers and foreign ministers should be told about the secret
deal, suggesting bureaucrats had controlled the top-secret matter, not
politicians.
In a written comment to Kyodo News, the Foreign Ministry denied such a secret
deal on the handling of nuclear weapons between Japan and the United States.
Since the introduction of nuclear weapons to Japanese soil requires a prior
bilateral consultation and there has never been such a consultation, the
government does not suspect that nuclear weapons have ever been brought into
Japan.
==Kyodo