Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2012 March 7 - 13 [POLITICS]

JCP Yoshii calls on gov’t to stick to ban on arms exports

Japanese Communist Party Dietmember Yoshii Hidekatsu urged the government to fully implement the three principles banning arms exports on March 7 at a House of Representatives Budget Committee meeting.

Yoshii’s argument was in response to the government’s recent move to give the U.S. forces spare parts for the C-27 transport aircraft the U.S. will provide for the Afghanistan Air Force.

He criticized this move as clearly going against the three principles which prohibit Japan from exporting weapons.

The JCP representative condemned the fact that Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu in his statement last December took the teeth out of the three principles in order to allow Japan to jointly develop and produce weapons with other countries.

On March 5, parliamentarians of the Democratic and Liberal Democratic parties agreed on the need to deregulate the ban on arms exports at a symposium on security measures hosted by a private organization in Tokyo.

Former Defense Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa stressed that the LDP itself initially called for the deregulation of the government interpretation on the right of collective self-defense and the maintenance of the three principles. He said, “We’d like to express appreciation to the DPJ for achieving the two objectives,” to Nagashima Akihisa, the special advisor to the prime minister on security.