TOKYO - Finland's recent lifting of its longstanding ban on allowing nuclear arms into the country is intended to maximize its deterrence and does not automatically mean such weapons will enter its territory, the Finnish ambassador to Japan said in a recent interview.
The legal change, which took effect July 1 and allows Finland to receive, transport or import nuclear arms, will "remove all the legal barriers to enable Finland to defend our homeland, (and) also make sure that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization can fully utilize the deterrence," Tanja Jaaskelainen told Kyodo News in Tokyo on Wednesday.
"There would be many checks and balances" by the government before allowing nuclear weapons into the country, she added.
Finland, which shares a more than 1,300-kilometer border with Russia, joined NATO in 2023 following its neighbor's invasion of Ukraine.
While the latest shift in the Finnish defense policy marks the country's deeper integration with NATO, some Japanese lawmakers have called for a review of the nation's nonnuclear principles prohibiting possession, production and introduction of nuclear weapons.
The Japan Innovation Party, a junior partner of the ruling coalition, has proposed "realistic consideration" over the introduction of nuclear arms to Japan, the only country to have had an atomic bomb used on it in war.
Emphasizing that the legal amendment could be applicable only in times of war, Jaaskelainen said that it will "ensure that NATO's deterrence is high and also keep the threshold of military action against Finland and the alliance as high as possible."
"We're not intending to station any nuclear weapons on our territory (permanently)," nor do any other parties of NATO have such plans, she added.
Having attended the peace ceremonies in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki in 2024, she said, "I pay extreme respect to the Hibakusha," -- the name given to the survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of the Japanese cities in 1945.
"Finland's message is that nuclear weapons should never be used again, very clearly. It is a deterrence that hopefully means they don't need to be used again."
Finland introduced a set of laws that fully banned the import, transport and possession of nuclear weapons in the late 1980s as it pursued a policy of neutrality during the Cold War.
