Page:Larry Niksch - Japanese Military's Comfort Women System - CRS April 3, 2007.pdf/5

 —Reportedly referring to the testimony of former comfort women, he said on March 5, 2007, that “testimony to the effect that there had been a hunt for comfort women is a complete fabrication.” He reportedly gave a no comment reply to an opposition member of the Diet who asked him on March 26, 2007, whether he considered as evidence of coercion the testimony of former comfort women.

—The Japanese government would not issue an apology to comfort women in response to passage of H.Res. 121 by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Abe also noted that the Japanese government had taken previous steps to deal with the comfort women issue, including “extending our apologies to them on a number of occasions.” He stated his intent to preserve the key measures taken by prior Japanese governments.

—He would “stand by the Kono Statement.” However, a Japanese Cabinet statement of March 16, 2007, seemed to dilute this statement by noting that the Kono Statement was not formally endorsed by the then Cabinet of Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi and that successive Japanese cabinets after 1993 had inherited it.

—He endorsed the letters of apology of his predecessors to comfort women who received assistance from the Asian Women’s Fund: “Former Prime Ministers, including Prime Ministers Koizumi and Hashimoto, have issued letters to the comfort women. I would like to be clear that I carry the same feeling. This has not changed even slightly.”

—Abe stated in the Diet on March 26, 2007, that “I apologize here and now as Prime Minister,” adding that “I express my sympathy toward the comfort women and apologize for the situation they found themselves in.”