Gov't submits Diet bill on increasing Cabinet members

TOKYO (Kyodo) - The government on Friday submitted a bill to the Diet to raise the number of Cabinet members by three in the hope of speeding up reconstruction of areas devastated by the catastrophic March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The current Cabinet Law stipulates that the number of ministers, excluding the prime minister, must not exceed 17. There are 17 ministers at present.
The three posts Prime Minister Naoto Kan is considering creating will respectively cover reconstruction work, issues related to the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant and tasks concurrently taken on by some ministers, such as Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano's job of Okinawa and Northern Territories affairs.
The government also presented a basic law that outlines the framework for the reconstruction of quake-hit northeastern Japan, including setting up a reconstruction agency -- proposed by the two main opposition parties -- within a year after enforcement of this law.
But prospects are bleak for the government led by the Democratic Party of Japan to secure enough support from opposition parties, who are increasingly hostile to Kan's handling of post-quake reconstruction efforts, to enact the revision of the Cabinet Law.
The Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito party, the country's largest and second-largest opposition parties, have demanded that a reconstruction agency, with stronger authority, be created immediately, and are eyeing a counterproposal to the basic law.
''We do have our differences in opinions...but we all share an understanding that disaster victims will be affected if the ruling and opposition parties do not agree,'' Edano said in a news conference, adding the ruling camp will be flexible in seeking the cooperation of the opposition bloc in the bills' passage.
Under the proposed law, the government plans to initially set up what it calls the ''reconstruction measures headquarters'' at the Cabinet which will be headed by Kan with the participation of all his ministers.
A key advisory panel to the government tasked to devise a master plan to rebuild regions will give recommendations to the headquarters.
The government aims to eventually reorganize the headquarters into the reconstruction agency.