Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Thursday denied the government had any involvement in honoring class-A war criminals of World War II at the Yasukuni Shrine.

Abe said that the shrine's management made the final decision on their own to enshrine the war criminals while the former Health and Welfare Ministry just provided related materials as required.

"I don't think there is any problem," he was quoted by Kyodo News as saying.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki made similar remarks earlier in the day, saying that the ministry only carried out its duty to provide data, as it possessed the Imperial Japanese Army's personnel records and did not give compulsive guidelines about "whom to enshrine and whom not to enshrine."

Speaking to reporters at his official residence, Abe said the ministry also gave information of serviceman to families of the war dead and veterans' groups.

The National Diet Library Wednesday released a book titled "A New Compilation of Materials on the Yasukuni Shrine Problems," which included documents suggesting that the Japanese government played a critical role in deciding whom the Shinto shrine should honor and proposed since the late 1950s that Yasukuni should honor war criminals.

The book also disclosed details of the decision-making procedures of the enshrinement, including minutes of meetings with the government, as requested of the shrine by the library.

It was the first ever going public of such a record, which was described by some Japanese analysts as contradictory to the government's long-lasting claim of knowing little about the reason for Yasukuni's honoring of war criminals.

Source: Xinhua