A former Japanese finance minister who resigned after appearing drunk at a press conference said Japan should discuss getting nuclear weapons to deter North Korean threats, media reported Monday.
"It is common sense worldwide that in a purely military sense it is nuclear that can counteract nuclear," conservative lawmaker Shoichi Nakagawa was quoted as saying by Kyodo News in a speech in his constituency.
The remark came after North Korea said it would resume its nuclear programme to protest a UN statement that condemned its satellite rocket launch this month, which Tokyo regarded as a long-range ballistic missile test.
The hawkish Japanese politician said he believed North Korea already possessed small nuclear warheads and the medium-range Rodong missiles to deliver them to almost any part of Japan, Kyodo said.
"North Korea has taken a step toward a system whereby it could shoot without prior notice," Nakagawa was quoted as saying in the northern city of Obihiro. "We have to discuss countermeasures."
The comment was immediately downplayed by Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura, who told reporters: "It's impossible for Japan to get nuclear weapons."
Japan "firmly maintains" its three-point policy of not possessing, producing or allowing the entry of nuclear weapons to the country, the top government spokesman said.
"Japan also has the obligation of observing the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, under which it would not produce nor obtain nuclear weapons," he said.
In October 2006, when Nakagawa chaired the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council, he said on a TV programme that he believed Japan's pacifist constitution does not rule out the option of possessing nuclear arms.
Nakagawa stepped down in February after television stations repeatedly aired his incoherent replies and drowsy appearance at a Group of Seven press conference in Rome, a debacle that triggered a political firestorm.
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