Uno Appears Set as Japan’s Next Prime Minister : Foreign Minister Is Reportedly Top Choice of Ruling Party Chiefs

Foreign Minister Sosuke Uno, 66, emerged Saturday as the leading choice to succeed outgoing Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita in his posts as chief of government and president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The party also unilaterally extended Parliament’s current term for 25 days.

Takeshita and Shintaro Abe, the Liberal Democrats’ secretary general, reportedly agreed at a Saturday meeting to ask Uno to take over the scandal-ridden party. They met in a hospital where Abe, a close political ally of Takeshita, is recovering from a gallstone operation.

Their decision is to be made final after Takeshita gets the approval of party elders this week. He was to meet with two of them today.

Emerging from his meeting with Abe, Takeshita told reporters that “next Friday would be a good time” to make the decision final.

A caucus of the party’s members of both houses of Parliament would elect a new party president, a post that, along with the premiership, Takeshita said he would resign as a way of assuming personal responsibility for an influence-buying scandal that has thrown Japanese politics into chaos.

Parliament in Disarray

However, this situation, which has kept Parliament in disarray for three months, could delay a parliamentary vote to elect the party’s new leader as prime minister.

Takeshita said that he and Abe “agreed not to discuss any names.” But all of Japan’s mass media reported that they had agreed on Uno. Analysts, moreover, noted that Takeshita would not have mentioned a date for making a final decision without agreement with Abe on a successor.

Some resistance among the party’s elders was reported, however, because of Uno’s position as a lieutenant of the faction headed by former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. In sworn testimony in Parliament on Thursday, Nakasone denied any wrongdoing but acknowledged receiving nearly $800,000 in funds from Recruit Co., an information and real estate conglomerate at the heart of the influence-buying scandal.

Analysts predicted that the form of contrition that the party would offer the public as a “conclusion” to the scandal would have to be worked out before Uno is publicly named. Prosecutors have filed charges against 16 people.

One leading political writer described Uno’s selection as “90% certain.”

Uno, himself untainted by the scandal, said he has heard nothing “officially” from Takeshita and would go ahead with plans to leave today for Paris to attend a Cabinet-level meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But he added that he would return if Takeshita submits his resignation, which would precipitate the resignation of the entire Cabinet.

Uno, who strongly protested Washington’s decision Thursday to threaten Japan with retaliation over three trade issues, is expected to meet Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher and U.S. Trade Representative Carla Anderson Hills at the OECD meeting.

Takeshita’s move to end a 32-day search for a successor came as the ruling party used its commanding majority in the lower house to extend Parliament’s term for 25 days. The action, in effect, fixes July 23 as the date of a crucial election for members of the upper house. Opposition parties boycotted the extension vote, condemning the move as “a rejection of democracy” by the Liberal Democrats, a conservative party.

It was the second time in a month that the Liberal Democrats have resorted to unilateral action in Parliament. On April 28, they rammed the fiscal 1989 budget through the lower house in the midst of another boycott.

The July 23 election will constitute the new prime minister’s first major test at home.

Stunned by the influence-buying scandal, which tainted every major leader of the party, and by voter resentment against a 3% consumption tax imposed beginning April 1, the Liberal Democrats face the threat of losing their majority in the upper house.

Takeshita’s apparent choice of Uno clearly placed priority on international problems over domestic politics.