A clear policy difference emerged between Japan and the United States when they had bilateral consultations before a U. N. panel adopted a Japanese resoluti<\/b>
\nA clear policy difference emerged between Japan and the United States when they had bilateral consultations before a U. N. panel adopted a Japanese resolution this month calling for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, according to diplomatic sources.
The United States had opposed including some sentences referring to the importance of Article 6 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and agreements reached at the review conferences on the NPT in 1995,2000 and 2010 in the Japan-sponsored U. N. resolution, the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity recently told Kyodo News.
The article, which was not mentioned in a similar U. N. resolution the previous year, calls on nuclear-armed states to pursue nuclear disarmament.
The resolution, titled \u201cUnited action with renewed determination toward the total elimination of nuclear weapons,\u201d was adopted by the First Committee on disarmament issues at the U. N. General Assembly on Nov. 1.
But Japan\u2019s key ally the United States abstained, calling it a \u201cstep back\u201d from last year\u2019s document, which it supported.
According to the sources, before the resolution was adopted by the committee, U. S. diplomats raised strong concerns about the draft that mentioned the article.
Also, the U. S. diplomats expressed strong opposition to a paragraph in it that urged all countries to take steps agreed to in the final documents of the NPT conferences, according to the sources.
The United States characterized the past agreements as \u201cout of date\u201d under the current security environment, the sources said.
The final document agreed to in 2000, for example, said there should be an \u201cunequivocal undertaking\u201d by nuclear weapon states to accomplish the complete elimination of their nuclear arsenals.
The U. S. diplomats\u2019 oppositions reflected the administration of President Donald Trump\u2019s reluctance to embrace the obligation of nuclear disarmament under the NPT.
The Trump administration also announced last month a decision to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which helped end the Cold War.
The United States also asked Japanese diplomats to delete a sentence urging North Korea to \u201csign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty\u201d from the draft resolution, because the Trump administration has already decided not to pursue ratification of the treaty itself, according to the sources.
The Japanese government deliberated the U. S. requests before concluding that it should reject them because Japan is the only country to have suffered the devastation of atomic bombings and cannot compromise on its fundamental principles to advocate nuclear disarmament.
\u201cIt is a red line for us,\u201d a Japanese source said.
However, the exposed policy difference indicates there may be difficulties between Japan and the United States in cooperating on nuclear disarmament agendas, as the NPT regime will mark the 50th anniversary in 2020 of the treaty\u2019s entry into force.
The U. N. resolution, penned by Tokyo, again omitted any reference to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in view of its reliance on the U. S. nuclear umbrella.
Taking these realities into consideration, for the past few years the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said both at home and abroad that it will seek to play a constructive role as a \u201cbridge-builder.\u201d
But the ambivalent nature of Japan\u2019s anti-nuclear policy has drawn criticism from nuclear disarmament advocates.
\u201cBeing a bridge-builder does not mean that Japan just takes the middle ground between nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states,\u201d Tatsujiro Suzuki, a Nagasaki University professor, said. \u201cAs a victim nation of nuclear bombs, Japan should keep a clear distance from the U. S. nuclear arming policy.\u201d
\u201cA notion of \u2018humanitarian consequence,\u2019 as emphasized in the nuclear ban treaty, is the element Japan has advocated for a long time,\u201d said Suzuki, who is also director of the Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition at the university. \u201cEven though Japan is not able to sign it right now, it should declare it will pursue future admission to the treaty. After that, Japan could be trusted as a bridge-builder.\u201d
Tokyo has drafted and put forward a similar motion calling for the abolition of nuclear arms for the past 25 years, with the latest version endorsed by 160 countries, up 16 from last year.
Four countries \u2014 China, North Korea, Russia and Syria \u2014 voted against it and 24, including the United States, abstained.<\/p>\n