Japan finance minister to skip G-20 meeting in London+

TOKYO, Sept. 1 Kyodo - Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano said Tuesday he will not attend this weekend's meeting in London of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20
economies, citing health reasons.

''I could not get a full go-ahead from my doctor'' to travel overseas, Yosano,
71, said at a news conference.
Yosano said his doctor advised him to be careful with his health because he may
not have recovered from the fatigue he accumulated during the campaign for last
Sunday's general election.
''But I am not saying my health is bad,'' said Yosano, an influential member of
the Liberal Democratic Party, which suffered a devastating defeat by the
Democratic Party of Japan in the House of Representatives election.
Yosano said that on Aug. 18, when the election campaign officially began, he
felt dizzy when standing up due to what he called dehydration.
He said Senior Vice Finance Minister Wataru Takeshita will represent Japan at
the two-day ministerial meeting that begins Friday.
The meeting is intended to determine the priorities of the G-20 summit in
Pittsburgh on Sept. 24 to 25.
Yosano, who was barely reelected Sunday, will work as finance minister until
the DPJ forms a new government, which it is widely expected to do in
mid-September.
Japan is in the process of transferring power from the LDP to the DPJ, so it is
unlikely to explain at the London meeting about the future course of its
policies regarding how to bring back the world's second-largest economy into a
more sustainable pattern of growth in the future.
In a related development, DPJ leader Yukio Hatoyama, who is expected to become
Japan's next prime minister later this month, held talks with Bank of Japan
Governor Masaaki Shirakawa for the first time.
Hatoyama told reporters after the meeting that he only had a general discussion
with Shirakawa on the current economic situation.
At the DPJ headquarters, Hatoyama also met with senior government officials
including Financial Services Agency Commissioner Katsunori Mikuniya and
Yasutake Tango, the top bureaucrat at the Finance Ministry.
Hatoyama said he learned about major issues to be discussed at the upcoming
G-20 meetings from them, adding he did not touch on the issue of how to craft
the state budget for fiscal 2010 once the DPJ forms a government.
At the London meeting, Takeshita, an LDP lawmaker, is expected to brief other
G-20 participants about Japan's nascent recovery such as that the economy, as
measured by gross domestic product, grew for the first time in five quarters in
the three months through June, according to Finance Ministry officials.
Meanwhile, on the LDP's crushing defeat, Yosano said at the news conference
that one of the main reasons he sees for it is that the government failed to
provide financial support to create effective demand in Japan's regional
economies.
Yosano said the public seemed disappointed in the LDP for choosing its
president just in terms of popularity over the past several years.
Yosano secured a seat in the powerful lower house under the proportional
representation system after he was defeated in his Tokyo constituency by the
DPJ's Banri Kaieda.
In the election, the DPJ won 308 of the 480 lower house seats to oust the
long-ruling LDP from power.
==Kyodo
2009-09-01 23:15:00