Sex-slave debate set to simmer on

TOKYO - A DIPLOMATIC furore over Japan's wartime brothels looks unlikely to fade after its Cabinet said yesterday that it had found no evidence that the military or government had forced women to work in the brothels.

'The government did not find evidence showing forced recruitment by Japanese military authorities or bureaucrats,' it said in a policy statement in Parliament in response to a question by an opposition lawmaker.

As proof, the Cabinet Office cited a two-year study that was the basis of a landmark 1993 apology that the Japanese government issued to former sex slaves.

The study concluded that the military was both directly and indirectly involved in recruiting women 'against their own will'.

The Cabinet said it made no reference 'to forced recruitment by military and administrative authorities'.

But it said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet stood by the 1993 apology.

Mr Abe caused outrage earlier this month when he said there was no evidence that 'comfort women' were forced into sexual slavery 'in the strict sense of coercion'.

He later said he was talking about physical coercion. He has since said that he stands by the apology, but will not issue another.

Conservative ruling party lawmakers argue that the women were paid professional prostitutes and that the authorities were not directly responsible for the brothels.

US Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer said yesterday it was clear the women were forced into the brothels, citing abundant testimony by survivors. 'I think they were coerced...they were raped by the Japanese military.'

REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, BLOOMBERG