TOKYO, Feb. 23 Kyodo

A special adviser to the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi criticized the Foreign Ministry on Sunday as giving the Japanese people an incorrect translation of the country's stance on Iraq presented at the U.N. Security Council last week.

''I'm disappointed with the Foreign Ministry,'' Yukio Okamoto, the Cabinet Secretariat special adviser on foreign policy, told a television news program on Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK). ''If they made this kind of translation even in a high school English exam, it would be deemed a wrong answer.''

Okamoto, a former Foreign Ministry official, was referring to the Japanese translation of the speech given in English by Japan's Ambassador to the United Nations Koichi Haraguchi during an open debate on Iraq issues at the Security Council on Tuesday.

''Even if the inspections were to be continued and strengthened, they will hardly lead to the elimination of its weapons of mass destruction unless Iraq fundamentally changes its attitude of cooperating only passively,'' Haraguchi said.

''There is serious doubt as to the effectiveness of continued inspections,'' he continued, casting unequivocal doubt on the work U.N. inspectors are conducting in Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction there.

In the Japanese translation the Foreign Ministry produced, however, Haraguchi said to the council, ''It cannot be denied that unless Iraq fundamentally changes its attitude of cooperating only passively, they (inspections) will hardly lead to the elimination of its weapons of mass destruction, raising doubts about the effectiveness of continuing the inspections.''

Okamoto said the ministry talks tough in the international community but does not do so for domestic audiences.

''We are not using separate languages,'' Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi told the same NHK program, but added that the ministry gave a different translation ''from the point of view of effective presentation.''

The issue of the different translation was raised in the ''Vox Populi, Vox Dei'' column that appeared on the Sunday edition of the Asahi Shimbun, a major Japanese daily.

At the open debate, Japan said it is ''desirable'' that the Security Council adopt a new resolution that ''clearly demonstrates the determined attitude of the international community,'' offering a hard-line position shared by few other countries that addressed the council.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Kyodo News International, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group