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Disappearance of documents on secret nuclear deal

the country had for decades had a secret agreement with Washington that allowed U.S. nuclear-armed vessels to pass through the island nation’s territory

U.S.-Japan Nuke Agreement Papers Vanished, Ex-Official Says, NTI: Global Security Newswire March 22, 2010 A former high-level Japanese Foreign Ministry official told Tokyo lawmakers Friday that important papers that addressed the island nation’s secret nuclear agreement with the United States appear to have vanished, the Japan Times reported (see GSN, March 17).

Kazuhiko Togo, who headed the ministry’s treaties bureau from 1998 to 1999, testified to a parliamentary foreign affairs committee about the disappearance of documents he had filed, including one that detailed a meeting where U.S. officials explained their country’s policy of not disclosing the location of its nuclear weapons.”I have heard from a person who was thought to have been very familiar with the internal situation at the Foreign Ministry that some related documents were discarded before the information disclosure law took effect” in 2001, Togo said.

He did not disclose the name of his source.Tokyo recently publicly confirmed a long-suspected state secret that contrary to Japan’s self-imposed nonnuclear principles that bar the nation from producing, hosting or possessing nuclear weapons, the country had for decades had a secret agreement with Washington that allowed U.S. nuclear-armed vessels to pass through the island nation’s territory (Masami Ito, Japan Times, March 20).

NTI: Global Security Newswire – U.S.-Japan Nuke Agreement Papers Vanished, Ex-Official Says

March 25, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear weapons