Japan likely to get PM who strains relations with N Korea and China

JAPAN: Japan's most important election in years will not be especially democratic - it will be closed to the general public and we already know the winner.

But, for better or worse, by the end of this month the world's second-largest economy will have a new leader, and he is already causing political waves.

Today, one million members of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) select a new party head who is almost certain - thanks to the LDP's dominance of the Diet - to step into the giant shoes of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi next week.

The public will not have their say until a general election next year.

Although technically a three-way race that includes foreign minister Taro Aso and finance minister Sadakazu Tanigaki, the clear frontrunner and man anointed by Mr Koizumi as his heir-apparent is Shinzo Abe.

Unlike Mr Koizumi, who was once considered too much of an oddball to helm the country, nobody can call Mr Abe a dark horse. The 51-year-old chief cabinet secretary is a well-known conservative with an impeccable political pedigree and a history of provocative, right-wing statements.

With his droopy, teddy-bear eyes and weak chin, Mr Abe is an unlikely looking hawk. But since coming to national prominence in 2002 when he began a tough-talking campaign against North Korea, he has championed a staunchly conservative political agenda that includes reviving the military, revving up patriotism and changing the 60-year-old pacifist constitution.

Supporters have dubbed him a Japanese Gary Cooper: soft-spoken, mercurial and ready to stand tall against the country's enemies. His critics accuse him of whitewashing history and stoking tensions with China and Pyongyang, which admitted four years ago to kidnapping Japanese citizens in the 1970s.

North Korea considers the abduction issue closed and claims all surviving Japanese nationalists have been released. However, Mr Abe promised this week to keep the issue alive by appointing a state minister to investigate the abductions if he is elected prime minister.

Yesterday, Mr Abe upped the ante in the diplomatic war with Pyongyang when he imposed long-threatened financial sanctions on the reclusive Stalinist state in a bid to force it back to talks on its nuclear programme.

Earlier this year, he angered both sides of the Korean peninsula when he suggested that Tokyo could pre-emptively strike North Korean missile bases.

China suspects that Japan's top government spokesman is using public anger in Japan against North Korea to whip up patriotism and achieve his long-term goal of rewriting the 1947 war-renouncing constitution.

Mr Abe's support for school textbooks that delete references to war crimes in China by the Japanese military has added to their concerns.

After five years of the unpredictable Mr Koizumi, who wound up his term with a valedictory visit to the Yasukuni Shrine war memorial, China and South Korea desperately want relations with Japan to improve.

But with all electoral dials pointing to Mr Abe, those countries see little reason for optimism.

"Those who aspire for better Sino-Japanese ties feel nothing butworried," said Beijing's official mouthpiece, the China Daily, last week.