'I saw' nuke pact minutes: ex-vice minister

A former vice foreign minister recently said he has seen documents from 1960 that confirm a secret Japan-U.S. pact under which Tokyo allows U.S. military ships and aircraft carrying nuclear weapons to transit Japan.

"I saw them. I have memories that we looked into them after something happened," the former top ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

The official, who served in key ministry posts in the 1980s and 1990s, said he can't remember the circumstances under which he read the Jan. 6, 1960, minutes.

The comment comes amid news that the Foreign Ministry, which has conducted a probe into four purported secret pacts, has decided to confirm the existence of the nuclear arms pact.

"The probe is now in the final stage, and we will announce the outcome in January," Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said Saturday, although he declined to reveal any details.

A third-party committee consisting of experts will be set up this week and will analyze the probe findings, according to the ministry.

There is unconfirmed information that documents pertaining to the pact were discarded around the time a law on the disclosure of administrative information was enforced in April 2001.

Declassified U.S. documents say the minutes in question are kept by the U.S. government side.

Previous governments led by the Liberal Democratic Party consistently denied the existence of the nuclear pact, but the new Democratic Party of Japan-led administration plans to officially change that stance.

The minutes mentioned by the former Foreign Ministry official, signed by Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas MacArthur II, have not been found in the Foreign Ministry's probe, according to a source close to the ministry.

The probe into the alleged nuclear pact and other secret agreements with the United States was ordered in September by Okada days after Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's government took office.

The United States is required to consult with Tokyo before bringing nuclear weapons into Japan under the 1960 bilateral security treaty.

No record of such consultations has ever surfaced.