Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi sacked his Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka and her deputy Yoshiji Nogami late Tuesday, in a move which could further erode his weak power base.
He announced the step two hours after the ruling coalition rammed through a bill to provide for a pump-priming extra budget, in a lower-house vote boycotted by opposition parties over a feud at the foreign ministry.
"I am responsible for this confusion," the premier told a midnight news conference at his official esidence, adding that the decision will have an "impact on my government."
"It was an unavoidable option in order to push through a supplementary budget and a main state budget amid such an economic situation and deal with a host of diplomatic questions," Koizumi said.
The shake-up followed a high-profile spat centred on the foreign ministry's decision to bar two Japanese non-governmental organisations from last week's conference in Tokyo on rebuilding Afghanistan.
They had been making contradictory remarks over whether senior Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Muneo Suzuki was involved in the decision to bar the two organisations.
The premier said he accepted Suzuki's resignation from the post of chairman of the lower house steering committee. He added that he had not yet chosen a replacement for Tanaka.
But press reports said that the premier had in mind Sadako Ogata, a former UN high commissioner for refugees, who co-chaired the Afghan meeting with clout rarely seen in Japanese diplomats.
Koizumi, who belongs to a minor faction in the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), handpicked Tanaka as foreign minister who had been helpful in his election to the party leadership last April.
The daughter of powerful former prime minister Kakuei Tanaka, she had wooed the nation with her outspoken style, boosting already high approval ratings for Koizumi, whose slogan of reform has faced resistance from the LDP's old guard linked to special interests.
Tanaka has been controversial almost from the day when she was appointed as Japan's first female foreign minister last April when Koizumi took office to replace gaffe-prone, unpopular Yoshiro Mori as premier.
Tanaka was always a trade-off between public support and political embarrassment both at home and abroad.
Memorable among Tanaka's other withering soundbites are her descriptions of Mori as "fatty man" and "alien-like boiled-egg faced" for former Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa.
The NGO row combined a long-running simmering feud with Suzuki with the near warfare being waged between Tanaka and her own ministry's senior bureaucrats, amid a series of corruption scandals.
In one of her most startling faux pas, Tanaka revealed to the press where the US State Department staff was sheltering immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Asked about Koizumi's own responsibility in choosing Tanaka, the premier replied: "Foreign Minister Tanaka has made great contributions but it was a bitter decision, which was unavoidable to normalise the situation."
Yukio Hatoyama, head of the main opposition Democratic Party, said Koizumi's decision had only masked the truth. "We will continue making thorough enquries."
In a full lower-house session, the three ruling parties voted in the bill for a 2.5 trillion yen (US$19 billion) second supplementary budget for the year to next March to pull Japan out of deep recession.
The bill was being sent to the upper house for further debate.
The LDP-led ruling coalition has a comfortable majority in the 480-seat lower house.
(China Daily January 30, 2002)
