JAPAN:Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe said yesterday a 14-year-old government study had found no evidence that the government or military had kidnapped women to work in wartime brothels.
Mr Abe sparked outrage overseas when he said earlier this month there was no evidence that Japan's government or army had forcibly brought women, many of them Korean, to serve Japanese soldiers in the brothels.
His statement issued in response to an opposition lawmaker's query, came as the US ambassador to Japan said he believed women were forced to act as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during the second World War.
"I take the word of the women that testified," said US envoy Thomas Schieffer. Three former sex slaves testified to US Congress last month. I think that they were coerced to engage in prostitution . . . That means they were raped by Japanese military. I think that happened and I think it was a regrettable, terrible thing that it happened."
Mr Abe has sought to dampen the furore, which threatened to cloud summits with Chinese and US leaders, by repeating that a 1993 apology stood and expressing sympathy for the suffering of the "comfort women" as they are known in Japan. He is to visit Washington in late April after a summit with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in Tokyo.
Mr Schieffer welcomed Mr Abe's backing for the apology and advised Japan to stick to that stance. "I think there is a sensitivity in the US on this particular issue, and I think the Japanese needed to be aware of that and I think they are," he said.
Mr Abe's original remarks sparked an irate reaction from South Korea. China, seemingly keen to keep on track an improvement in ties that began after Mr Abe took office, has called on Japan to face up to its past but has been restrained in its reaction.
Yesterday Chinese president Hu Jintao told visiting Japanese lawmakers that ties "continue to be on good terms" after Mr Abe's ice-breaking October visit to Beijing, Kyodo news agency said.
Echoing remarks by officials after the 1993 study was completed, Mr Abe's written statement yesterday said there had been no direct reference in documents found during the research that either government or military officials had forcibly hauled the women to the brothels.
Mr Abe last week rejected a demand by a group of ruling party lawmakers for the government to conduct a new investigation, but said the government would co-operate with a party study. The head of the group - which denies victims' accounts of being forced by Japanese soldiers to work in the brothels - said on Thursday they would forge ahead with the research.