TOKYO, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Japan's Defense Minister Tomomi Inada Wednesday once again denied her involvement in a coverup scandal of concealing mission logs recording the daily activity of Japanese troops during a controversial peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.
Inada maintained she was not complicit in a plan to conceal the logs of the troops that were initially said to have been discarded by Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) members, but were later found to have been kept in digital format.
A commercial network TV company here however has reportedly obtained "handwritten notes" taken by a senior official from the defense ministry during a meeting of top officials held on Feb. 13.
The notes reportedly, contrary to Inada's denials, show that the minister was aware of the logs' existence, which was made clear to her by a senior Ground Staff Office member.
At a meeting two days later, top officials decided that the logs' existence should be concealed, sources close to the matter have stated.
Inada, the sources said, agreed to the plan to conceal the logs.
Inada told a press briefing on the matter Wednesday, that in light of the emergence of the "notes" her stance remains unwavering.
"It's the same as what I said earlier at the Diet. I have not conformed the existence of the notes," she said.
Inada, a lawyer-turned-politician, according to claims by opposition party members who are again calling for her resignation, was allegedly seeking to conceal the logs so as the GSDF troops could remain in South Sudan under new operational guidelines, despite the deteriorating situation and potentially imminent physical danger to the troops.
The logs record the troop's activities during a time when 270 people died in fighting between government forces and rebels in Juba, between July 7 and July 12, 2016.
In the recovered logs, the troops said they must be "careful about getting drawn into sudden fighting in the city." The record also refers to the possible "suspension of UN activities amid intensifying clashes in Juba."
The descriptions in the logs would have certainly seen the Japanese troops withdrawn from the area as they could have be caught up in fighting overseas, which would not only endanger their lives, but also contravene the nation's pacifist constitution.
The defense ministry initially said in December last year that the logs from July detailing the increasingly severe situation for the Japanese troops, had been discarded by GSDF members.
The defense ministry in February, under pressure from opposition parties and the public, said in a volte-farce it had found the logs in digital format on a computer belonging to the Self-Defense Forces Joint Staff Office.
But the ministry, at this juncture, still falsely claimed that the GSDF had discarded the same data.
Inada's denial will give the opposition camp more impetus to call for her resignation, political analysts believe.
