Hatoyama busy in diplomatic events as day nears he becomes premier

TOKYO, Sept. 3 Kyodo -
With about two weeks away from his scheduled launch of a new government, a
spate of foreign countries on Thursday sent their local envoys or made phone
calls to Democratic Party of Japan President Yukio Hatoyama.
Hatoyama, Japan's prime minister in waiting following the DPJ's election
victory, held talks with ambassadors from the United States and Russia -- John
Roos and Mikhail Bely -- on Thursday afternoon, after speaking on the phone
with U.S. President Barack Obama earlier in the day.
The 62-year-old DPJ chief also said he received phone calls from British Prime
Minister Gordon Brown, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, as
well as U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who all congratulated him on the
DPJ's sweeping victory in the House of Representatives election on Sunday.
Hatoyama and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Roos, who welcomed the DPJ's victory,
agreed to strengthen the Japan-U.S. alliance but refrained from discussing
potentially controversial issues such as the DPJ's plan to review the
relocation of U.S. troops stationed in Japan.
Calling Hatoyama Japan's ''future prime minister,'' Roos told reporters, ''We
spent a lot of time talking about how to enhance and further deepen the
relationship across a broad range of issues.''
''President Obama is very much looking forward to working with the incoming
prime minister and the new government,'' he said. ''We have a lot of work to
do, but we are going to do it together.''
The meeting between Hatoyama and Roos, who are both alumni of Stanford
University, seemed to proceed in a friendly, delightful atmosphere, according
to Hatoyama.
Russian Ambassador Bely told Hatoyama that the big victory of the DPJ must
reflect the Japanese people's strong trust in the party and expectations for
the country's development.
Bely said the biggest objective of Thursday's meeting was for him to convey
congratulations from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin to Hatoyama.
Any touchy bilateral issues including the sovereignty row over four islands off
Hokkaido were not discussed, according to Hatoyama.
But Hatoyama, who serves as head of a Japan-Russian association, told reporters
he said to the Russian ambassador that the two countries must build relations
of trust in order to resolve the pending issues.
In the brief telephone talks, Brown, Zapatero and Ban indicated their interests
in meeting with Hatoyama on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New
York or the Group of 20 financial summit in Pittsburgh later this month.
The leaders of Britain and Spain also agreed with Hatoyama to beef up their
respective bilateral relations, according to the DPJ official who briefed
reporters on the telephone conversations.
==Kyodo