Japan Press Weekly

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2011 May 25 - 31 [POLITICS]

Kasai: gov’t should protest US nuclear testing

Japanese Communist Party representative Kasai Akira at a Lower House Committee on Foreign Affairs meeting on May 25 demanded that the government of A-bombed Japan lodge a protest against a new form of U.S. nuclear testing using plutonium.

Kasai pointed out that the nuclear tests conducted in November last year and March this year run counter to the NPT and U.S. President Obama’s pledge to strive for a world without nuclear weapons.

Foreign Minister Matsumoto Takeaki in response stated, “The testing neither contradicts the NPT nor Japan’s position given that the tests did not entail an explosion and were conducted to maintain the reliability and efficacy of the nuclear arsenal.”

Kasai argued that it “conflicts with the effort to achieve a nuclear weapons-free world” because such testing, no matter if it entails a detonation, points to a possible use of nuclear weapons in the future and the continuation of nuclear weapons deployment.

Kasai complained, “It is shameful for the government of the atomic bombed nation” to not do anything while Hiroshima Hibakusha, the city mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the governor of Nagasaki lodged a united protest against the U.S. nuclear testing.

The JCP representative also asked why Japan abstained from a vote on a resolution adopted at the U.N. General Assembly last autumn with 133 countries calling for the start of negotiations on an international treaty banning nuclear weapons.

The foreign minister replied, “Japan judged the resolution as not having the proper form to call for a world without nuclear weapons.”

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Nagasaki Hibakusha protest US nuclear testing

Five groups of Nagasaki Hibakusha on May 27 published a letter of protest to U.S. President Barack Obama for having conducted two nuclear weapons tests.

The letter points out that the two tests, though in a new form, were virtually the same as previous subcritical nuclear tests.

It criticizes the Nobel peace prize winner for going back on his own word, and calls on his government to abandon any form of testing of nuclear weapons performance.