Tokyo - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday tried to
persuade Japan's opposition leader to back an extension of his
country's military mission in Afghanistan.
Ichiro Ozawa, head of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan,
told Merkel he opposed the extension of the mission to refuel ships
in the Indian Ocean, which expires on November 1, the party said in a
statement reported by the Kyodo news agency.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government is having difficulty
winning the support of the opposition to extend a law to continue the
deployment.
'Japan's refuelling mission contributes to German navy vessels and
is also sought by the international community,' Abe said Thursday. 'I
plan to explain those things to the Democrats.'
The Democratic Party of Japan gained control of the upper house of
parliament from Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party in July 29
elections. Ozawa has argued that broader United Nations authorization
is needed for Japan to engage in the military mission.
Earlier Thursday, Merkel, who arrived in Japan from China on
Wednesday, was received by Emperor Akihito before giving a speech on
climate control at a business symposium in Tokyo.
The German chancellor is seeking to establish binding worldwide
climate-protection targets in the next few years. She laid out a
model on how to do so ahead of a conference in December in Bali that
was expected to get talks rolling on sealing a deal by 2009 on
fighting global warming that would succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which
expires in 2012.
It isn't sufficient if each country says it is doing as much as it
can, Merkel said in her speech, adding that what is needed is
'qualifable reduction goals' to decrease carbon dioxide emissions.
Merkel also proposed for the first time publicly that limits
should be put on greenhouse gas production by developing countries,
such as China and India. She said that the long-term goal should be
that every person on the planet would be allowed to produce the same
amount of carbon dioxide and the per-capita output in developing
countries should not rise above that in industrialized nations.
The industrialized countries have it within their grasp to
substantially reduce their energy consumption, which would also lead
to a reduction in per-capita energy use, Merkel said without defining
a ceiling for worldwide per-capita energy consumption.
The developing countries, therefore, have the task of reining in
their output of pollution by using 'intelligent growth' strategies,
the chancellor said.
Merkel stressed the key role the United States would play in the
upcoming climate talks, saying that if Washington does not get on
board, other countries like China and India, which are rapidly
increasingly their output of greenhouse gases, would also not
participate.
The United States, which has balked at setting greenhouse gas caps
under the presidency of George W Bush, has long been the biggest
producer of greenhouse gases in the world, but by some accounts,
China surpassed it this year with its booming, inefficient industry.
Merkel hailed the agreement made in June in Germany in which the
Group of Eight established industrialized countries agreed to halve
their greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, saying it was a milestone
that approximated concrete reduction targets, which the United States
could no longer so easily make 'disappear.'
Merkel praised the Japanese government's engagement on climate
change after she and Abe pledged Wednesday that their countries would
be at the vanguard of efforts aimed at reducing greenhouse gases.
Merkel also discussed the environment and climate change during
her half-hour audience with the emperor at the Imperial Palace.
During her three-day stay in Japan, the German chancellor is also
to visit Kyoto and Osaka.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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