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TOKYO - JAPANESE Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura berated his subordinates on Saturday for failing to notify him of a radioactive leak from a US nuclear submarine, saying he learnt of the incident on television.
The communication glitch came the same day that Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda installed a new cabinet to revive sagging public support for his government.
'This (Saturday) morning I was watching CNN, and even if I don't understand English that well I saw that something strange was going on', Mr Komura, who retained the post in the new cabinet, told a news conference.
'I therefore contacted (his subordinates) myself', he said, adding that foreign ministry officials 'should have shared the information faster' to enable him to make an announcement quickly.
The Japanese foreign ministry said it received the information from the US government on Friday afternoon.
Mr Komura said officials did not notify him because the leak posed no risk for humans or the environment. 'But that is not a reason for delay', he said.
The Pentagon on Friday announced that trace amounts of radioactivity may have seeped out of US nuclear missile submarine USS Houston during a cruise that included stops in Japan and Guam.
An investigation determined the amount of radioactivity that seeped from a valve was less than half a microcurie, or less than what would be found in a 22.6 kilogramme bag of lawn fertilizer.
The seepage was detected on July 17 when water that had collected in a pipe connected to the nuclear engineering plant spilled onto a sailor while the submarine was in drydock in Honolulu, Hawaii, the US Navy said.
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