Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said yesterday that Japan would not apologize again for forcing women, mostly Asians, to act as wartime sex slaves for its soldiers even if US lawmakers adopt a resolution calling for an apology.

Abe, seeking to bolster support among his conservative base, has already sparked diplomatic ire by appearing to question the state's role in forcing the women to prostitute themselves for soldiers during World War II.

US Congressman Michael Honda, a California Democrat, has introduced a non-binding resolution calling on Japan to unambiguously apologize for the tragedy that thousands of Asian women, many Korean and Chinese, endured at the hands of its Imperial Army.

"I have to say that even if the resolution passes, that doesn't mean we will apologize," Abe told a parliamentary panel yesterday, adding the US resolution contained factual errors.

But Abe repeated that he stood by a 1993 government apology that acknowledged the Japanese military's role in setting up and managing wartime brothels and that coercion was used.

"It is not true that Japan has never reflected or apologized," he told reporters later.

"The facts are as contained in the (1993) statement."

Last week, Abe sparked a fierce reaction from Seoul when he appeared to question the degree to which physical coercion was involved in recruiting the women for the brothels.

"There is no evidence to back up that there was coercion as defined initially," he said on Thursday, apparently referring to accusations that the Imperial Army had kidnapped women and put them in brothels to serve soldiers.

Yesterday, Abe said there seemed to have been some apparent cases of coercion, such as by middlemen, but he added: "It was not as though military police broke into people's homes and took them away like kidnappers."

Source: China Daily/agencies