Japan Socialists’ New Stand Still Leaves Security Treaty Doubts, U.S. Envoy Says

U.S. Ambassador Michael H. Armacost said Tuesday that a new Socialist Party policy toward the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, which he called the heart of the bilateral relationship, leaves many questions unanswered.

Armacost’s remark was the first official U.S. reaction to a Sept. 10 announcement by Takako Doi, the Socialist chairwoman, that the party would retain the treaty if it comes to power at the head of a coalition government.

“We welcome an adjustment of Socialist thinking on the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty that is the heart of our relationship,” Armacost told American reporters. “But at the same time, there are many questions left unanswered.”

Chief among them, he said, is whether the new policy represents “merely a tactical adjustment aimed at achieving power as head of a coalition, or whether it represents adjustments in Japanese thinking about their alliance with the United States.”

Armacost said the party’s new policy appears to affirm the treaty in principle but reject it in specifics.

Of particular concern, he said, were Doi’s declarations that a Socialist-led coalition would suspend joint military exercises with the United States, reduce and eventually eliminate U.S. bases in Japan and enforce Japan’s ban against the manufacture, possession or introduction of nuclear weapons.

Armacost said Doi and the Socialists have failed to clarify “how they would proceed with what we have always called the ‘associated agreements’ ” concerning the deployment of nuclear weapons.

Since 1955, Liberal Democratic governments have told the Japanese people that they believe no nuclear weapons were on board U.S. ships or planes in Japanese territory. But they have never pressed the United States to declare the absence or presence of nuclear weapons.

U.S. policy is not to disclose the location of nuclear weapons.