Japanese Politicians Fail to Agree on WWII Statement : Asia: Impasse over wording could splinter ruling coalition. One version of resolution says Japan was drawn into war by other nations.

Japanese politicians deadlocked Friday in their acrimonious debate about whether this nation had committed aggression in World War II, forcing them to postpone a self-declared deadline to craft what now promises to be a meaningless statement on the past.

The impasse over history, however, bodes ill for the current course of this nation, as it could shatter the three-party coalition that rules Japan, said Kosuke Uehara, the Socialist Party’s chief negotiator with the two other coalition partners.

A split--with the Socialists and the New Party Harbinger deserting the coalition--would deprive the government, headed by Socialist Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, of a majority in the lower house and force a general election.

Top leaders of the three parties were scheduled to meet Monday.

Talks between committee chairmen ended when the Liberal Democrats, the successors of prewar conservative parties, proposed wording for a promised 50th-anniversary war-end parliamentary resolution.

In their version, the statement would place the blame for Japanese wartime aggression and colonialism in Asia on Western powers, describing Japan as ensnarled in World War II by accident.

“At a time when world powers were competing in aggressive acts and colonial rule, our country, too, in that process, while thinking of its own security, became involved in the fires of war with many countries,” read the proposed wording from the Liberal Democrats.

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But Uehara condemned the Liberal Democrats’ proposal as “lacking any expression of remorse as an aggressor.”

“The upshot in their draft is that Japan fought a war of self-defense. There is no way that this can withstand criticism at home and abroad,” said Uehara, adding: “It is natural that doubts will arise” over whether the year-old coalition governing Japan can continue.

The Liberal Democrats’ proposal ignored a call from Murayama earlier Friday for a clear apology to mark the 50th anniversary of the war’s end Aug. 15. The current session of Parliament is scheduled to end June 18.

The Socialists, for their part, had compromised by wording their resolution to put Japan’s “militarism,” “colonial rule” of Korea and Taiwan and Japan’s “acts of aggression” in the context of “an imperialistic confrontation of Western powers that began in the late 19th Century.” The former Marxist party also agreed to drop the world “apology” and substitute “an expression of regret” to “many countries, especially Asian peoples.”

The New Party Harbinger supported the Socialists’ wording.

A group of more than 200 Liberal Democrats belonging to the upper and lower house of Parliament has vowed to oppose any resolution that acknowledges Japan’s colonialism or aggression.

Claiming that Japan went to war to liberate Asia from colonial rule by white people, the group also refuses to allow the word “apology” to appear in any resolution.

The Liberal Democrats last June agreed to enact a 50th anniversary war-end resolution as the price for winning Socialist participation in a coalition that brought the LDP back to power as the major prop of the Murayama government.

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During more than four decades, the Socialists had made anti-war policies and apologies to Asia for Japan’s aggression a pillar of their policies.

An intraparty split deprived the Liberal Democrats of a majority in June, 1993, and an election one month later confirmed their status as a minority party for the first time in 38 years.

President Kim Young Sam of South Korea and officials of China have told Japan that they will consider the planned resolution an important sign of Japan’s thinking on peace and security in Asia.

Whatever the outcome, the horse-trading that has already occurred has wiped out any chance of a declaration being accepted as a sincere reflection by the Japanese on their past.