2007 December 5 - 11 TOP3 [
POLITICS]
JCP demands full revelation of defense scandal
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December 5, 2007
JCP Chair Shii pointed out that it is impossible to put the special measures bill to a vote within the current Diet session that ends on December 15 and stated, “The Diet should not extend the session. This bill must be discarded after thorough discussions.”
The House of Councilors Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on December 4 began discussion on the new anti-terrorism special measures bill to allow the deployment again of the Maritime Self-Defense Force to the Indian Ocean.
Japanese Communist Party representative Inoue Satoshi grilled Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo about the scandal involving Moriya Takemasa, the former top defense bureaucrat who was arrested on suspicion of taking bribes.
Inoue pointed out that Miyazaki Motonobu, the bribe-giver and former executive of arms dealer Yamada Corporation, used the Japan-U.S. Center for Peace and Cultural Exchange as a foothold to foster relations with politicians and that this organization has been a hotbed of collusion between the Japanese and U.S. arms industries, Dietmembers with vested interests in military affairs, and defense officials.
Inoue revealed that Fukuda served as a director of the center until last March and asked him to explain his activities. Fukuda, however, took an irresponsible attitude by saying, “Frankly, I don’t know what this organization has been doing.”
However, Fukuda admitted that he attended the center’s study meeting and that he delivered a speech as the chief cabinet secretary at the center’s reception. Fukuda also took part in the Japan-U.S. Security Strategy Conference that the organization held in Washington, D.C. in 2000.
Inoue also revealed that in six years until FY 2006, the organization’s 16 member companies, including the top defense contractor Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, won contracts totaling 4.8 trillion yen from the Defense Ministry, accepted 201 former defense officials under the “parachuting” system of retirement, and gave 1.3 billion yen to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in donations.
Stressing that such a collusive relationship has caused the defense scandal, Inoue demanded that Akiyama Naoki, a full-time executive of the Japan-U.S. Center for Peace and Cultural Exchange, be summoned to the Diet as a sworn witness.
Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo in a TV interview aired on the same day pointed out that it is impossible to put the special measures bill to a vote within the current Diet session that ends on December 15 and stated, “The Diet should not extend the current session. This bill must be discarded after thorough discussions.”
Shii pointed out that Moriya has been suspected of acting in the interests of private corporations in procuring military equipment amounting to two trillion yen a year and arranging the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan that will cost three trillion yen. He stressed that the structure of military concession hunting underlies the scandal.
Pointing out that Moriya took the lead in sending the SDF to Iraq and imposed the strengthening of base functions in the name of U.S. military realignment, Shii said that those who have been involved in the scandal have no right to speak about dispatching the SDF abroad or “international contributions.” The Diet should give top priority to thoroughly probing into the scandal, he stressed.
- Akahata, December 5, 2007
