Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Denies Takaichi Drank Before Missing G7 Video Call, Saying She Stayed Sober in Case She Had to Attend
TOKYO — Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara on November 9 flatly denied reports that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi had been drinking before she missed a Group of Seven (G7) leaders' video conference, calling the claims based on assumption and speculation and saying she had not touched alcohol at all that evening — a point he said he wanted to make unmistakably clear.
The video conference was held on the night of October 2, with Japan represented by Kazuya Endo, the Foreign Ministry's senior deputy minister for foreign policy, in her place. A few hours earlier, Takaichi had dined at the prime minister's official residence with Liberal Democratic Party executives including vice-president Taro Aso. Jiji Press reported that Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yusuke Nakanishi, who was also at the dinner, told the Diet on October 27 that alcohol had been served, but declined to say whether the prime minister herself drank; another attendee was quoted by media as saying she had.
Kihara said Takaichi abstained precisely because an added agenda item might have required her to join the call. He repeated the government's explanation for her absence: the meeting's timing was settled only at the last minute, the equipment and technical staff needed could not be prepared in time, the main topic was diesel prices between the United States and Europe, and sending a substitute was permitted.
The denial came more than a month after the meeting. Opposition lawmakers had already pressed the government in the Diet over both the absence and the drinking question before Kihara addressed it at the November 9 press conference.
(Source: Jiji Press)
Source: Jiji Press
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：日本首相高市早苗官方肖像（日本内阁广报室，CC BY 4.0），经 Wikimedia Commons，本站档案图复用。 / Photo: Official portrait of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi (Cabinet Public Affairs Office, Japan, CC BY 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons; GSM archive reuse.
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