JCP Kasai criticizes foreign minister for accepting nuclear weapons as deterrence force

Japan Press Weekly

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JCP Kasai criticizes foreign minister for accepting nuclear weapons as deterrence force

Japanese Communist Party representative Kasai Akira on March 12 condemned the foreign minister for attempting to adopt as government policy the idea of limiting the role of nuclear weapons to nuclear deterrence. “Such an idea leads to allowing certain nations to possess nuclear weapons,” said Kasai at a House of Representative committee meeting on Foreign Affairs.

In his Diet speech on January 29, Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya stated, “I find worthy of attention such ideas as prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states, or making others from using such weapons as a sole purpose of retaining nuclear weapons, as the concrete means to take a first step toward achieving the ‘world without nuclear weapons’.”

“Adopting this idea will give the U.S. and other nuclear weapon states the green light to continue to possess nuclear weapons. How can that be a first step toward a world without nuclear weapons?” Kasai asked the foreign minister.

Okada responded by saying that limiting the role of nuclear weapons will pave the way for banning the use of nuclear weapons in the future.

The JCP representative stressed, “The idea goes against the increasing world current for the abolition of nuclear weapons toward the NPT Review Conference in May. It is not a policy the government of the only atomic-bombed nation should promote.”

Pointing out that the concepts of nuclear deterrence and a nuclear umbrella are major obstacles to creating a world without nuclear weapons, Kasai urged the government to break away from these ideas and take the initiative to start international negotiations for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

- Akahata, March 13, 2010