While Yukio Hatoyama is set to become Japan's leader on September 16, his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) remained in closed-door talks with its two coalition partners and on Monday delayed naming its key cabinet picks.

Hatoyama, whose untested centre-left party defeated a long-ruling conservative government in a landslide election on August 30, said his new government would take an aggressive global stance on climate change.

Japan would seek to cut its emissions by 25 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels -- a cut far deeper than the eight-percent reduction pledged by the outgoing business-friendly government of Prime Minister Taro Aso.

"Our nation will strongly call on major countries around the world to set aggressive goals," said Hatoyama, 62, who last week suggested that Japan would seek a greater voice in international diplomacy.

The premier-in-waiting said he would detail his plan at a UN meeting on climate change in New York later this month, when he will also make his debut on the international stage and meet other world leaders.

Yvo de Boer, the chief of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which preceded the Kyoto protocol, called the DPJ's target "laudable."

"With such a target Japan will take on the leadership role that industrialised countries have agreed to take on climate change abatement," de Boer told the Asahi World Environment Forum conference in Tokyo.

Japan is the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, which are blamed for raising global temperatures, melting the earth's ice caps and glaciers, and changing weather patterns.

Environmental groups hailed the DPJ pledge, but the outgoing deputy minister for the economy, trade and industry, Harufumi Mochizuki, charged that Hatoyama "is choosing a very tough road ahead for the Japanese people and economy."

Hatoyama later said: "I have heard about the concerns from business circles. But this is the global trend. If Japan plays a leading role, it will have a positive effect on Japan as well as our industries."

Turning to his efforts to form a government, Hatoyama said his party had delayed naming key cabinet posts until it settles talks with its partners, the Social Democrats and the tiny People's New Party.

The DPJ won an overwhelming majority in the lower house on August 30 but needs the support of the smaller groups in the upper house.

"Since the talks on forming a coalition have not been settled, we're not in a position to make an announcement yet," Hatoyama said.

He added: "I would appreciate it if we (the three parties) could reach an accord tomorrow. Then I think we can go ahead with personnel affairs."

The DPJ and the Social Democrats differ on some key policies, including security. The Social Democrats have long been stern defenders of the pacifist post-war constitution and opposed any kind of military engagement.

The party has in the past demanded that a DPJ-led government immediately end an Indian Ocean naval refueling mission supporting US forces in Afghanistan, while Hatoyama has said the DPJ would only end it early next year.

Media have reported some likely cabinet picks, citing unnamed party sources.

The frontrunner for foreign minister is Katsuya Okada, 56, a former DPJ leader and one-time trade ministry technocrat, reports have said.

The next finance minister has been tipped to be Hirohisa Fujii, 77, a political veteran who previously served in the post briefly in the 1990s.

The central policy coordinator -- carrying the new title of state strategy minister -- is expected to be one-time DPJ leader Naoto Kan, 62, who would double as the deputy prime minister.

While the DPJ on Monday delayed naming the cabinet posts, it confirmed its next secretary general, party heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa, who is credited with engineering the DPJ's stunning election victory.

"His contribution to the victory in the lower house election was remarkable," said Hatoyama, who took over as party chief when Ozawa resigned earlier this year, tainted by a funding scandal.

related report
Japan's next PM delights green groups, worries business
Japan's next prime minister Yukio Hatoyama delighted environmental activists but worried business leaders Monday by vowing to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

"We welcome new prime minister Hatoyama's courage," said World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Japan office chief Takamasa Higuchi in a statement, praising Hatoyama who is set to take office on September 16.

The new target is far more ambitious than the eight-percent reduction advocated by the outgoing conservative government of Prime Minister Taro Aso, which lost parliamentary elections on August 30.

"It is hard to believe," Nippon Oil Corp. chairman Fumiaki Watari said of Hatoyama's plan.

"I want to ascertain his intention," he told reporters while visiting Beijing with a delegation of Japanese business leaders, the Jiji Press news agency reported.

"It is nothing but preposterous," Kobe Steel advisor Koushi Mizukoshi said, according to the news agency. "It will undoubtedly run counter to national interests. It will become impossible to conduct manufacturing activities at home."

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told Kyodo News that the new target "will be an encouragement for other countries to show a greater level of ambition."

The WWF's Higuchi said Japan until now "lacked an ambitious attitude because it was largely influenced by an industrial sector that is backward-looking in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

Greenpeace also called the new target "a major step forward."

"This is the first sign of climate leadership we have seen out of any developed country for quite some time -- the type of leadership we need to see from President (Barack) Obama," said Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace International.

Kaiser also said the target still fell short of a 40 percent cut by 2020 required from industrialised countries as a group and warned that it needed to be a domestic target, rather than achieved through international offsets.

Outgoing premier Aso's business-friendly government was criticised for bowing to pressure from Japanese manufacturers who have pushed for a new reduction target of no more than six percent.

The head of the WWF Global Climate Initiative, Kim Carstensen, said Japan's new higher goal "will be a big force in moving one step forward the stalled talks between developed and developing countries."

Hatoyama, who heads the centre-left Democratic Party of Japan, said Tokyo would ask other major greenhouse gas emitters to also set tough targets on emissions blamed for raising global temperatures.

Japan, the world's second largest economy, will formally present its goal at international talks in Copenhagen in December aimed at agreeing a follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.

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