Ex-bureaucrat confirms secret U.S. nuke pact

A former administrative vice foreign minister Monday confirmed a 1960 secret agreement allowing the United States to bring nuclear weapons into Japanese territory without consulting Japan, but Tokyo again denied this arrangement.

Ryohei Murata, 79, is the first former top bureaucrat at the Foreign Ministry to acknowledge the existence of the secret agreement.

He told The Asahi Shimbun that a document explaining the secret agreement was handed down to successive administrative vice foreign ministers, who then informed their foreign ministers.

"I took over the document (from my predecessor) and explained its contents to foreign ministers," Murata said.

When the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty was revised in 1960, the two countries agreed that prior bilateral consultations would be required for the United States to bring nuclear weapons and mid- and long-range missiles into Japan.

However, the two countries also made a secret agreement that such consultations are unnecessary when U.S. warships and aircraft carrying nuclear weapons call at Japanese ports or pass through Japanese territorial waters or airspace.

The existence of the secret agreement has already been validated through U.S. State Department documents revealed in 2000 and statements by Americans involved in the deal.

However, the Japanese government has continued to issue denials. The latest one came Monday.

"Such a secret agreement does not exist," Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said at a news conference. "If prior consultations are not held, then nuclear weapons are not brought into Japanese territories. We have no doubts at all about that."

Murata was administrative vice foreign minister for about two years from July 1987. He was also Japanese ambassador to the United States.

When he took over the post, he received the document on the secret agreement from his predecessor. He said the contents were written in Japanese on a single piece of clerical stationery used in the Foreign Ministry in those days.

Murata said he explained the contents to then Foreign Minister Tadashi Kuranari and his successor, Sosuke Uno.

However, Murata said he had no chance to explain the secret deal to Hiroshi Mitsuzuka, who became foreign minister when Uno assumed the post of prime minister, because the Uno Cabinet was short-lived.

He also said he did not explain the document directly to prime ministers.

"That was the task for the foreign ministers. But I don't know whether they actually explained it to prime ministers," he said.

When asked why he is now acknowledging the existence of the secret agreement, Murata indicated that he was disturbed by the lies.

"Successive administrative vice foreign ministers have conveyed the contents (of the secret agreement) to successive foreign ministers. But they have said in the Diet that nuclear weapons have not been brought (into Japan). I think that it is inappropriate," Murata said.(IHT/Asahi: July 1,2009)