Japan PM shrine visits worry few US lawmakers: Abe

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi’s visits to a Tokyo shrine for the war dead are not the
subject of widespread criticism among U.S. lawmakers, Chief
Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said on Tuesday.

In the latest sign of controversy over the prime minister’s
shrine visits, a senior U.S. lawmaker said in a letter that
Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine raised questions about
his suitability to speak to the U.S. Congress.

Japan’s relations with China and South Korea have been
chilled by Koizumi’s annual visits to Yasukuni, which honours
some war criminals along with Japan’s 2.5 million war dead.

Abe, Japan’s top government spokesman, said Koizumi did not
have any plans to deliver a speech to the U.S. Congress and
added that such criticism of Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni was
not very common among U.S. lawmakers.

“If the prime minister’s true intentions regarding visits
to Yasukuni aren’t being understood, we need to make efforts so
they will be understood,” Abe told a news conference.

“But I think that many members (of Congress) have not made
criticisms from such a perspective… Based on an understanding
of the importance of freedom of religion, I don’t think there
is much criticism like that,” he said.

Koizumi, who last visited Yasukuni in October, has
repeatedly said his visits to Yasukuni are meant to pray for
peace and pay respects to Japan’s war dead.

A spokesman for Henry Hyde, chairman of the House of
Representatives Committee on International Relations, said on
Monday that Hyde had raised concerns about Koizumi’s shrine
visits in a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert in late
April.

“It is a letter in which the chairman does raise concerns
about the efficacy of an invitation to the Japanese prime
minister, who continues to make controversial visits to the
Yasukuni shrine,” said the spokesman.

The speaker’s office confirmed receiving the letter but had
no further comment on its contents or on a possible invitation
to Koizumi to address Congress during a trip by Koizumi to the
United States that is expected in June.

The spokesman declined to discuss the contents of the
letter, which had come to light in a report by Japan’s Asahi
Shimbun newspaper.

The Asahi quotes the letter from Hyde, an Illinois
Republican and World War Two veteran, as calling for assurances
from Koizumi the Japanese leader would not visit Yasukuni soon
after making a speech to a joint session of Congress during his
U.S. visit.

According to the Asahi, Hyde warned that a visit to
Yasukuni would be an affront to older Americans who remember
World War Two and would dishonour the site in Congress where
President Franklin D. Roosevelt made his “day of infamy” speech
after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Last year, Hyde voiced concerns about Koizumi’s Yasukuni
visits and his committee held a hearing on tensions in Japan’s
ties with China and South Korea over the shrine issue.

(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in Washington)