U.S. Is Japan’s Nuclear Shield, Rice Says

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to use all available force to protect Japan in case of attack, a declaration aimed at halting any rush by East Asian countries to acquire nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s Oct. 9 underground test has spawned fears of an arms race in which Japan, South Korea and possibly even Taiwan might seek a nuclear deterrent.

Senior Japanese lawmakers and advisors to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have called for a discussion of whether a nuclear option should be an element of Japan’s security. None have actually called for the building of an atomic bomb.

Speaking in Tokyo on the first leg of a diplomatic swing through Asia, Rice said Washington’s nuclear umbrella provides sufficient security to countries that could be targets of a North Korean attack.

“I reaffirmed the president’s statement of Oct. 9 that the United States has the will and the capability to meet the full range, and I underscore full range, of its deterrent and security commitments to Japan,” she said.

Abe also tried to squelch any further talk of a Japanese bomb before it becomes a major distraction to his push for a more assertive international role for Japan. “The debate is finished,” the prime minister said.

Rice’s tour took her to Seoul today. On Friday, the secretary goes to Beijing, where she will attempt to bolster enforcement of the United Nations Security Council resolution that imposes limited sanctions on North Korea.

The talks in Japan were expected to be the smoothest given the consensus between Washington and Tokyo on the need for a tough response to North Korea.

Rice said U.S. and Japanese officials were still working out details of how to carry out inspections of North Korean cargo. The secretary said inspections probably would be intelligence-driven and target specific ships.

“This is not an embargo,” she said. “This is not a blockade or quarantine.”

Abe’s government is eager to participate in at-sea inspections, but Japan has a tangle of constitutional provisions and other laws that prevent its Maritime Self-Defense Forces from firing at other vessels unless Japanese ships are under direct threat.

A Japanese coast guard vessel sank what Japan said was a North Korean spy ship in its waters in 2001. But the Abe government has declared that even warning shots would constitute a threat of force that is banned under the postwar constitution.

Many here expect the Abe government to use the tension over North Korea’s nuclear program to end some of the restrictions on the armed forces.

Japan’s fear of North Korea, notwithstanding the reclusive country’s erratic missile program and inability to feed its own people or light its cities, offers Abe the right political conditions to unravel many of the legal restrictions on the military.

Abe has already signaled his intention to amend laws that prevent Japanese forces from participating in collective defense.

The Bush administration welcomes Japan’s military modernization. In recent years, Washington and Tokyo have taken steps to integrate their military commands in Asia. As recently as 2004, officials including Howard Baker, the then-U.S. ambassador to Japan, said they were sanguine about the prospect of Japan someday acquiring nuclear weapons.

But the administration has shown more alarm about that prospect in recent days, as the musings of Japanese officials about the need to discuss a nuclear option threatened to focus global attention on a potential Japanese bomb rather than on North Korea’s nuclear program.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso raised eyebrows across the region Wednesday when he told a parliamentary committee that it was important for Japan to discuss the need for a nuclear capability.

“The reality is that it is only Japan that has not discussed possessing nuclear weapons, and all other countries have been discussing it,” he said.

But hours later, standing beside Rice at a Tokyo news conference, Aso reiterated Japan’s commitment to not build nuclear weapons.

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bruce.wallace@latimes.com