Japan to review lead-up to WW2 comfort women statement

Japan will form a team to review the lead-up to a 1993 statement which acknowledged its wartime use of sex slaves, its top spokesman says.

Yoshihide Suga said the team would "re-examine and understand the background".

The acknowledgement that women were forced into sex slavery with Japanese military complicity was viewed as a landmark apology.

A former leader has said any move to review the apology, known as the Kono statement, would be "absurd".

Some 200,000 women in territories occupied by Japan during World War Two are estimated to have been forced to become sex slaves for troops....