The Japanese government is expected to publicly confirm an until-recently secret agreement that allowed U.S. military vessels and aircraft equipped with nuclear weapons to make stops at the island country, Kyodo News reported Saturday (see GSN, Nov. 2).
While conducting an internal review, the Japanese Foreign Ministry came upon records that the two nations had come to a nuclear agreement. The agency is expected to share the results of its review in early 2010, sources said.
Japan adheres to principles that bar it from producing or possessing nuclear weapons or allowing nuclear arms deployments on its soil by other states.
Under a 1960 security treaty, Washington must receive permission from Tokyo before any of its strategic arms could enter the country. However, the deal apparently created an exception to that mandate.
Under the decades-long leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party, the Japanese government maintained that there was no secret nuclear deal with Washington and that U.S. nuclear weapons had never stopped off in Japan. Tokyo's new government, led by the Democratic Party of Japan, is expected to disavow that old position (Kyodo News I, Nov. 21).
"The probe is now in the final stage, and we will announce the outcome in January," said Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada on Saturday, the Xinhua News Agency reported (Xinhua News Agency, Nov. 22).
Prior to the changeover in leadership in September, Tokyo worked hard to persuade a U.S. congressional nuclear policy panel that Washington should continue providing a strong "nuclear umbrella" as a hedge against any assaults on Japan by China, North Korea or other countries, Kyodo reported.
High-level Japanese envoys are reported to have told the task force that they had real worries over the future of the nuclear umbrella as a deterrent. They asked that Japan receive advance notice before any move to end use of the U.S. nuclear-armed Tomahawk Land Attack Missile.
"It is very surprising that officials within the Japanese government have lobbied the United States to retain the nuclear Tomahawk," U.S. nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis said.
He said that the Tomahawk missile "can drift off course and fly into the terrain that is supposed to guide it."
A Tomahawk fired from the Pacific Ocean that was intended to strike North Korea could wind up landing in Japan or South Korea instead, Lewis said (Kyodo News Service II/Breitbart.com, Nov. 23).