AFTER JUST 8 MONTHS IN OFFICE, JAPAN'S PRIME MINISTER RESIGNS

TOKYO – Embattled Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Wednesday he was resigning after just eight months in office, largely because of his broken campaign promise to move a U.S. Marine base off the southern island of Okinawa.
The prime minister faced growing pressure from within his own party to step down ahead of July's upper house elections.
His approval ratings had plummeted over his bungled handling of the relocation of the Marine Air Station Futenma, which reinforced his public image as an indecisive leader.

• Hatoyama, a professor-like millionaire with a Ph.D in engineering from Stanford University, is the fourth Japanese prime minister to resign in four years. Viewed as somewhat aloof and eccentric by the Japanese public, he earned the nickname "alien."
• Until Tuesday night, Hatoyama insisted he would stay on while intermittently holding talks with key members of his Democratic Party of Japan. But on Wednesday morning, Hatoyama faced the nation to say he was stepping down.
• "Since last year's elections, I tried to change politics in which the people of Japan would be the main actors," he told a news conference broadcast nationwide. But he conceded his efforts fell short. That's mainly because of my failings," he said.
• Hatoyama, 63, cited two main reasons for his resignation: the Marine base issue and a political funding scandal, in which two of his aides were convicted of falsifying political contribution reports and sentenced to suspended prison terms. Hatoyama himself did not face charges in the case, but it tainted his image.
• His party said it would hold a meeting Friday to select a new leader, who will officially become the next prime minister after mandatory parliamentary votes expected early next week.

Analysts said Finance Minister Naoto Kan or Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada were the most likely candidates to succeed Hatoyama.
Kan, seen as an outspoken and independent-minded politician, gained prominence for exposing a 1996 government cover-up of HIV-tainted blood products that caused thousands of hemophilia patients to contract the virus that causes AIDS.

• Okada has developed a working relationship with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, but his involvement in discussions over Futenma might make him unpopular with voters.
• Hatoyama's government came to power amid high hopes in September — promising to make politics more transparent and rein in the power of bureaucrats — after his party soundly defeated the long-ruling conservatives in lower house elections.
• He also had promised to forge a "more equal" relationship with the United States and to move Futenma off Okinawa, which hosts more than half the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan under a security pact.
• But last week, he said he would go along with the 2006 agreement to move the base to a northern part of the island, infuriating residents who want it off Okinawa entirely.

Hatoyama said Wednesday that recent tensions in the Korean peninsula surrounding the sinking of a South Korean warship reminded him of the potential instability in Northeast Asia and drove home the importance of the U.S.-Japan security pact.

Source; AP