Fukuda cautious about announcing medium-term CO2 cut targets soon

Rome, June 5 Kyodo - Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda expressed caution Wednesday about announcing Japan's medium-term greenhouse gas emission reduction targets before next month's Group of Eight summit in Hokkaido, saying he needs to see what other countries think.

''It's all right to mention (the figures before the summit), but if the grounds for setting the targets are different among various countries then they will not serve as a comparison,'' Fukuda told reporters traveling with him in Rome.

''That would simply turn out to be political posturing, so we need to make clear first that we will be setting certain numerical targets to some extent based on certain calculation methods,'' he said.

Fukuda also said it would not be desirable for Japan, as this year's chair country of the G-8 framework, to ''look good'' by independently announcing its numerical reduction targets for the period through around 2020 or 2030 and telling other member countries to follow suit.

''I wonder if the other countries would converge (on Japan's idea), so I want to think carefully about this matter,'' the prime minister said. ''We are currently considering whether or not to unveil (medium-term) numerical targets.''On Sunday after his talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Fukuda said in a joint press conference that he intends to announce his government's ideas about medium-term greenhouse gas reduction targets before hosting the July 7-9 summit, but stopped short of saying whether this would involve numbers.

Japan has proposed halving global emissions from current levels by 2050 as a long-term measure, but has yet to specify numerical targets for the medium term looking toward around 2020.

The G-8 groups Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Concerning the possibility of attending the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in August, Fukuda suggested it may be difficult to arrange as he also wants to travel to Hiroshima and Nagasaki around the same time to attend events commemorating the U.S. atomic bombing of the two Japanese cities.

''I haven't thought about it at all,'' he said when asked if he intends to attend the Aug. 8 opening ceremony of the sporting extravaganza. ''I will think about it from around today.''But he said he was not sure if it was physically possible for him to make a trip to China as he wants to attend the commemorative events on Aug. 6 in Hiroshima and three days later in Nagasaki.

On domestic issues, Fukuda hinted at the possibility that he may call the next extraordinary parliamentary session, usually held in the fall, in August depending on how the opposition parties respond to government-proposed bills in the time remaining in the ongoing regular Diet session set to run through June 15.

''We will have to be prepared that (the extraordinary session) may take more time than usual because we may have to conduct a thorough session in the fall,'' he said, referring to the situation in which opposition parties control the House of Councillors and have managed to delay deliberations on a number of bills submitted by the government.

Asked whether he plans to reshuffle his Cabinet following the G-8 summit, Fukuda repeatedly said he is keeping an open mind on the matter.==Kyodo