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TOKYO: A group of Japanese ruling party lawmakers urged the government Thursday to review its past apology to World War II era sex slaves, who have become the focus of a simmering diplomatic row.
More than a dozen conservatives from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) held a meeting at the party's headquarters and adopted a proposal for a review of the apology to so-called "comfort women".
"We want the Japanese government to carry out a fact-finding study again," former education minister Nariaki Nakayama, who chairs the group, told the meeting.
"For the honour of the former Japanese military, we have to counter criticism which is based on a misunderstanding," Nakayama said.
In 1993, Japan's top government spokesman issued a statement voicing "sincere apologies and remorse" and acknowledging that Japan's imperial army was involved "directly or indirectly" in sexual slavery.
Historians say at least 200,000 young women, mostly from Korea but also from China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan, were forced to serve as sex slaves in Japanese army brothels.
Abe, known for his conservative views on history, angered China and South Korea last week when he said in parliament that comfort women were not forced by the military into sexual slavery "in the strict sense of coercion."
He has insisted that Japan stands by the past apology, but the LDP lawmakers pressing for a revision of the statement argue that China and the two Koreas are using the comfort women issue for political ends.
"According to our survey, there was some coercion by some private parties but not by the government," the proposal said.
The group plans to collect signatures from some 130 LDP lawmakers and submit them along with the proposal to Abe, Nakayama said. - AFP
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