New Japan premier reaffirms US alliance in phone call with Obama as Cabinet takes shape

more images

more images

more images

more images

New Japan PM affirms US ties in call with Obama

TOKYO — Japan’s new prime minister made his diplomatic debut Sunday in a telephone call with President Barack Obama, reaffirming his country’s alliance with Washington and promising to work hard on an agreement to relocate a contentious U.S. Marine base.

Naoto Kan, a straight-talking populist, was elected prime minister Friday, replacing Yukio Hatoyama who stepped down last week after breaking a campaign promise to move the Marine base off the southern island of Okinawa.

Kan told Obama that relations with Washington are a “cornerstone” of Japan’s diplomacy and vowed to “further deepen and develop the Japan-U.S. alliance to tackle global and regional challenges,” Japan’s Foreign Ministry said.

He also promised Obama to “make a strenuous effort” to tackle the relocation of Marine Air Station Futenma, it said.

Under an agreement signed last month between the two governments, the base is to be moved to a less-crowded part of Okinawa, but Kan faces intense opposition from island residents who want it moved off Okinawa completely, as Hatoyama had promised. Because their opposition is so intense, some analysts have questioned whether the plan can actually be carried out.

A White House statement did not mention Futenma, saying “the two leaders agreed to work very closely together” and consult on the nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran. An administration official added the leaders “hit it off well on a personal level.”

The Futenma issue is just one of many tough challenges facing Kan, whose foremost mission is to win back voters disgusted by Hatoyama’s broken promise and the corrupt image instilled by party heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa, who also resigned last week from the party’s No. 2 post.

Kan spent the weekend crafting his Cabinet, which he plans to formally announce early this week. He told reporters that he had asked Reform Minister Yukio Edano to become the party’s deputy leader, in an apparent attempt to distance himself from Ozawa’s influence and corrupt image.

Japanese media reports said Sunday that key ministers from the Hatoyama Cabinet, including Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada and Defense Minister Yoshimi Kitazawa, are likely to be retained.

Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan swept to power just nine months ago, trouncing the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party amid high hopes for change and more government accountability. But public opinion quickly soured after Hatoyama became ensnared in a political funding scandal and reneged on his campaign promise on the Futenma issue, while Ozawa was implicated in a separate funding scandal.

Unlike the blue-blooded Hatoyama, Kan comes from an ordinary family and received his political start in civic activism. He’s known for speaking his mind and gained popularity in the 1990s for exposing a government cover-up of HIV-tainted blood products.

Seen as decisive and down-to-earth, Kan may have what it takes to regain support for the battered Democrats and “seems to be well aware of his mission,” the national Asahi newspaper said in an editorial.

A survey by the Mainichi newspaper found 63 percent of respondents expressed high hopes for Kan, while 37 percent said they had little hope. Those who said they supported the Democrats rose to 28 percent from 17 percent in the previous survey in May.

A separate survey by the Asahi had similar results, with 59 percent of respondents expressing high hopes for Kan and the Democrats’ approval rating jumping to 33 percent from 28 percent.

Neither poll gave a margin of error. The Mainichi survey, which conducted random telephone interviews of 981 voters, would normally have a sampling error of about 5 percentage points, while the Asahi’s, which interviewed 1,074 people, would have approximately a 4-point margin.

Even if Democrats do poorly in elections for half of the upper house expected around mid-July, they would still remain in power because they command a large lower-house majority. But heavy losses could prompt the party to woo new coalition partners to ensure smooth passage of bills — and could cost Kan his job.