Way Cleared for Hata to Become Japan Premier

TOKYO — Deputies of Japan’s tattered eight-party coalition finally paved the way early today for Foreign Minister Tsutomu Hata’s election as prime minister by approving a 10-point platform, but not before they again reached the brink of a breakup.

Party leaders said they will meet this afternoon and give final approval to both the policy accord and the choice of Hata, 58, the mild-mannered leader who helped launch a rebellion ending 38 years of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party last summer.

It was not officially decided when Parliament’s lower house will elect him prime minister, but the balloting is expected to take place Monday, 17 days after Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa announced that he was resigning over accusations of personal corruption.

Hata was expected to head a shaky--and possibly short-lived--administration that could face its first crisis as early as June.

Coalition deputies completed the platform at 1:17 a.m. today after a series of six meetings punctuated by threats from the Socialist Party to leave the coalition and counter-threats to form a government without them.

Hata, who has kept silent on policy during all the machinations that followed Hosokawa’s resignation announcement, remained optimistic throughout the day of tensions.

“A difficult birth requires pain,” he said.

On the surface, the agreement provides a Hata-led government with a policy consensus that Hosokawa’s government lacked. It commits the new government to decreasing government regulation; dispersing the central government powers; opening Japan’s markets to foreign trade; eliminating price differences in products sold in Japan and abroad; promoting economic demand at home to pull in imports, and reducing “in stages” Japan’s trade surpluses.

But the agreement was achieved only by six of the coalition partners, and that immediately raised the likelihood that the Hata government might run into a wall even faster than the 8-month-old Hosokawa Cabinet.

In addition, the eighth party in the coalition, Chief Cabinet Secretary Masayoshi Takemura’s New Party Harbinger, boycotted the platform talks and said it would not be bound by the policies. The party had announced earlier that it would not accept any posts in the new Cabinet. It has affirmed, however, that it will vote for Hata and remain in the coalition.

With the coalition’s numbers in Parliament, refusal by either the Socialists or the New Party Harbinger to support a bill would block its passage in the lower house.

Minoru Morita, a noted political commentator, said the final coalition platform did not truly represent the Socialists’ beliefs. He predicted that an explosion over two crucial issues--taxes and North Korea--could precipitate a crisis for Hata’s government as early as June.

The 13 1/2-hour dispute, capping seven days of policy talks, focused on 10 words in planks dealing with those two points. Both issues are of major concern to the United States.

The Socialists, the largest party in the coalition, offered a major concession by agreeing to support a future increase in indirect taxes. Ever since 1989, when Socialist opposition to enactment of a consumption tax sparked the party’s best-ever showing in an election, the party has resisted any move to raise indirect taxes.

But Ichiro Ozawa, the coalition’s chief strategist and Hata’s deputy in the Japan Renewal Party, balked at an attached demand that “the people’s agreement” be sought in the process.

After an earlier agreement over how the new coalition would deal with “an emergency on the Korean Peninsula” that might arise from North Korea’s refusal to accept international inspection of its nuclear facilities, the Socialists posed a new demand on the issue.

Like China, one of the North Korean regime’s few allies, the Socialists had maintained close relations with North Korea throughout the Cold War. They now demanded that Japan act only “in solidarity with China” in the event of a crisis over North Korea. Ozawa rejected the demand, saying it would tie Japan’s policy to decisions in Beijing.

At that point, Koken Nozaka, chairman of the Socialists’ lower house steering committee, declared that his party would not negotiate these two issues. If Ozawa and others refused to accept them, he added, “we will quit the (policy) talks. . . . After that, the question will be whether we remain in the coalition or not.”

Ozawa and Yuichi Ichikawa, secretary general of the Buddhist-backed Komei (Clean Government) Party, countered with threats to form a new Cabinet without the Socialists.

After trade union leaders rushed to Socialist headquarters to urge that the party remain in the coalition, its leaders backed down.

In a compromise, they accepted language about seeking “the people’s understanding”--rather than “agreement”--about raising indirect taxes, and they dropped their demand for “solidarity with China” in dealing with North Korea.

A future increase in indirect taxes is considered essential to finance a three-year income tax cut beginning this year. A two-year extension of this year’s income tax cut--a major U.S. demand--is expected to be a pillar of the government’s plan to open markets, lessen its own control of the economy and stimulate private spending.

The plan is expected to be how Japan proposes to keep its promise of a “substantial reduction” in its $141-billion global trade surplus and its $60 billion worth of black ink in trade with the United States. Hata will inherit Hosokawa’s promise to present the new package to President Clinton when they meet at a summit of advanced industrial democracies in Naples, Italy, in July.

On North Korea, the coalition agreed to “obey” any U.N. sanctions that might be imposed against North Korea. But the platform failed to spell out whether Japan is willing to revise its laws to permit its own troops to assist and provide supplies to U.S. military forces that might blockade North Korea.