November 16, 2007	Friday	Ziqa’ad 05, 1428

TOKYO, Nov 15: Japan’s opposition on Thursday questioned the finance minister’s fitness for office after he was accused of dining with a military contractor at the heart of a growing scandal.

A recently retired top bureaucrat of the defence ministry, Takemasa Moriya, triggered a storm last month when he admitted that the contractor treated him to fine dining, gifts and more than 200 golf trips.

Summoned to parliament on Thursday to give sworn testimony, Moriya said that two former defence chiefs – Fumio Kyuma and current Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga – joined him at dinners with the contractor.

Nukaga, a former journalist who headed Japan’s Defence Agency from 2005 to 2006, denied any close links with the contractor, former Yamada Corp. executive Motonobu Miyazaki, who was arrested last week.

“I never had dinners with Mr Moriya and Mr Miyazaki, the three of us together, although I attended meetings or study groups that also included more people,” the finance minister of the world’s second largest economy told reporters.

The opposition, which won one house of parliament in summer elections, vowed to press Nukaga.

“We need to discuss if Mr. Nukaga is suitable to be the finance minister,” senior opposition leader Naoto Kan said.

The opposition used its newfound power this month to suspend a naval mission in the Indian Ocean supporting the US-led “war on terror”, saying that officially pacifist Japan should not participate in “American wars”. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda urged the opposition not to tie the scandal to his efforts to pass legislation to restart the mission.

“There are times when politicians attend gatherings of that nature.

Wouldn’t it be a stretch to take that and say things about the legislation?” Fukuda told reporters before leaving for Washington on his first trip abroad as premier.

Fukuda said that Nukaga had told him that he did not accept any special treatment from Miyazaki or Moriya.

“You know, there are many occasions at which people dine together,” chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said separately.—AFP