Sunday, July 8, 2007 2:44 am | 
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Ex-Defense Minister says no to meeting with A-bomb surviviors
Former Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, who resigned last Monday over the public outrage sparked by his June 1 remarks about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1945 atomic bombings, declined an invitation to meet with 5 Nagasaki A-bomb survivor groups, the Asahi Shimbun reported Saturday.
According to the survivor groups, it was Kyuma who had first requested the meeting. The five groups discussed the matter Friday, and decided to invite Kyuma to meet with them, in the form of a public Q&A meeting. On Saturday, however, Kyuma’s office called and said the ex-minister was no longer interested. Reason given: “It would affect the upper house election”.
Toyoichi Ihara, president of one of the survivor groups, criticized Kyuma’s decision: “When we learned he wouldn’t meet with us, it became clear his (previous) apologies were not sincere.“
“What we had in mind was just meeting and apologizing, but since they wanted a public questioning, we thought it unwise. We would not want it to be used [as a platform to criticize LDP],” Nagasaki Liberal Democratic Party officials told the Asahi Shimbun.
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