Japan's PM to make global debut

JAPAN: Japan's newly anointed premier Yukio Hatoyama will be the new face at this week's G20 summit but he has already made a splash with ambitious plans on climate change and an assertive stance towards Washington.

Fresh from Wednesday's appointment, he will this week meet US President Barack Obama, China's President Hu Jintao and other leaders at the UN General Assembly and climate change talks in New York and the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh.

The centre-left leader whose Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ended more than half a century of almost unbroken conservative rule in a sweeping election win last month has signalled a more vocal stance on world affairs for Japan.

"This will be the perfect opportunity for the Hatoyama administration to promote its policies to the world," said government spokesman Hirofumi Hirano. A key priority for Hatoyama will be to reassure Obama, whose message of "change" he echoed on the campaign trail, that Japan remains a solid ally, despite pledges by his party to scale back some military cooperation.

"The first step is to build a relationship of trust with President Obama," Hatoyama said this week. But he added he wants relations with Washington in which "Japan can act more proactively and tell them our opinions frankly."

Left-leaning coalition members have pushed for a cut in the 47,000-strong US troop presence in Japan, and Hatoyama has said he would end an Indian Ocean naval refuelling mission that supports US-led forces in Afghanistan. Hatoyama in a recent essay attacked the excesses of US-style capitalism, causing worry in Washington but earning praise from EU commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, who hailed the "converging views" between Brussels and Tokyo. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced confidence last Wednesday that US-Japan ties will "stand the test of any political changes."

Tokyo, Sunday, AFP