MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's Foreign Ministry expressed concern Sunday about a Japanese official's reported suggestion that Japan should be able to have nuclear weapons.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said last week that Japan's war-renouncing Constitution should not prevent it from having nuclear arms for self-defense, Kyodo News reported. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi later said he stands by Japan's longstanding policy of not building or possessing nuclear weapons.
In neighboring Russia, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said Sunday that Fukuda's statement "prompts an understandable concern."
"Japan - a huge world power, and the only victim of atomic bombs - has always been in the forefront of support for nuclear disarmament," Yakovenko said in a statement.
"Now as the leading nuclear powers are making steps toward reducing their nuclear potential, such announcements by Japanese officials do not encourage the strengthening of the nonproliferation regime, and appear an anachronism," he said.
Yakovenko was referring to a landmark arms control agreement signed by U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin last month slashing each country's nuclear arsenals by two-thirds.
Russia has also bristled at Koizumi's efforts to increase the role of Japan's military. Relations between Moscow and Tokyo have improved since the 1991 Soviet collapse, but they have never signed a formal treaty ending World War II because of a territorial dispute over four North Pacific islands.