Word: koizumis
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...party's best long-term hope of presenting a unified front against the LDP. His reputation as a serious policy wonk-particularly on Japan's hot-button pension-reform issue-and his history as a committed consensus-builder, they say, have made him a potent contrast to Koizumi, whom voters have begun to think of as imperious and impulsive. "Okada is a leader for the times," says Etsushi Tanifuji, a political-science professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. "After 9/11, politics in some way had to be very speedy. But voters are realizing that speedy can be sloppy." If Okada...
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has spent two years on a delicate diplomatic mission: negotiating the release of Japanese citizens kidnapped in the 1970s and '80s by North Korea. That effort has produced an unintended result: a looming extradition battle with the U.S. Among those freed is Charles Jenkins, who is accused by Washington of deserting from the U.S. Army and defecting to North Korea in 1965. On July 18, Jenkins was expected to land at Tokyo's Haneda Airport with his wife, former abductee Hitomi Soga, 45, and their children Mika, 21, and Belinda...
...Jenkins, 64, would like to settle in Japan, but the U.S. has said it wants to extradite him for prosecution. Koizumi has asked for leniency, if not a pardon. For the U.S., this diplomatic face-off comes at a bad time: it's not keen to alienate Japan, a key ally in the war on Iraq, but it also can't afford to appear soft on deserters. Jenkins' ill health may help: he reportedly suffers from abdominal surgery complications and is expected to head straight to a Japanese hospital. Reeling from the scandal over its abuse of prisoners in Iraq...
...driver Angelo de la Cruz was kidnapped by insurgents outside Fallujah on July 8 and threatened with decapitation unless the Philippines' 51 peacekeepers were pulled out from Iraq, Manila was presented with a wrenching and all-too-familiar dilemma. Similar demands were made of Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in April when three Japanese civilians were kidnapped in Iraq, but he refused to withdraw his 550 soldiers as their captors insisted (the hostages were later freed). Likewise, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun last month would not submit to terrorists' demands that he cancel plans to send...
...only logical explanation for this change in policy and her willingness to risk disappointing her allies is to tame the protests," says Representative Teodoro Casi?o. Senator Rodolfo Biazon notes: "Had [Arroyo] not listened to the pulse of the people, she could have been toppled." Still, Roh and Koizumi stood fast, despite the political risks back home. By showing that kidnapping pays, Arroyo might find she has created even bigger problems?for herself and for her country's allies...