U.S., Japan Hurriedly Set Summit : Diplomacy: Stalemate in trade talks spurs the urgent conference this week. Bush and Kaifu to meet in Palm Springs.

Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu will interrupt parliamentary proceedings to make an urgent trip to Palm Springs to meet President Bush this Friday and Saturday, the U.S. and Japanese governments announced Saturday.

The unexpected trip--unprecedented because of the complete lack of advance planning and its timing right after Kaifu delivers a traditional policy speech Friday--underscores a rising crisis in U.S.-Japanese relations.

Tokyo’s announcement said only that Bush invited Kaifu to meet him in Palm Springs on Friday and Saturday and that Kaifu would respond officially after forming a new Cabinet on Tuesday.

Japanese diplomats, however, confirmed privately that Kaifu had accepted Bush’s proposal but was delaying public confirmation only because he has not yet gone through the parliamentary formality of winning election as prime minister and forming a Cabinet.

A vote for prime minister is required in the aftermath of last Sunday’s election for the lower house, which the ruling Liberal Democratic Party won handily. The vote will be Tuesday.

Bush extended the invitation in a late-night call that apparently woke up Kaifu--a point that Japanese diplomats refused to confirm. They also refused to pinpoint the time of the call, which the announcement said came “in the deep of the night” of Friday-Saturday.

The bilateral summit is certain to focus on the yearlong series of Structural Impediments Initiative talks, the centerpiece of the Bush Administration’s attempt to solve trade frictions with Japan.

Hours before Bush called Kaifu, S. Linn Williams, deputy U.S. trade representative, complained after the third round of SII talks that Japanese negotiators lacked “political guidance” that they need to remove impediments to trade.

Williams also disclosed that a coordinated process to produce a political commitment to make the SII talks a success had begun. Although he did not mention Bush’s phone call to Kaifu, he cited a letter that the President sent to Kaifu last Monday and a statement here Friday by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. Both Bush and Cheney stressed the importance of the SII talks.

An announcement by the White House, however, said only that the two leaders would conduct “a general discussion of international developments, the U.S.-Japan global partnership and bilateral relations.”

“The visit underlines the vital importance both countries attach to the U.S.-Japanese relationship and its contribution to the preservation of peace and prosperity in the Pacific and throughout the world,” the White House said.

The two leaders also are expected to discuss threats of retaliation that the United States has made if Japan fails to open its markets to forestry products, communications satellites and supercomputers.

Kaifu will leave Tokyo on Friday evening, after delivering a traditional policy speech required at the opening of all sessions of Parliament. He will fly overnight to the West Coast, crossing the international date line, and meet Bush on Friday. He is expected to leave Palm Springs on Saturday, arriving in Tokyo on Sunday.

On the following day, Kaifu is scheduled to answer questions about his policy speech in Parliament.

Never before has a U.S.-Japan summit been scheduled without extensive advance planning.

Although Kaifu at the beginning and the end of the lower house election campaign had said he wanted to make an “early” visit to the United States to resolve U.S.-Japan frictions, officials in Tokyo were caught by surprise by the sudden scheduling of the trip. Foreign Ministry officials said “everything--except the trip itself--has to be worked out.”

Even the selection of those who will accompany Kaifu remains up in the air.

Although Kaifu is expected to reappoint both Foreign Minister Taro Nakayama and Finance Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto to his new Cabinet, the choice of a new minister of international trade and industry has not been decided. Traditionally, the foreign minister accompanies the prime minister on overseas trips, while the Cabinet’s two main economic ministers usually join the Japanese leader on trips that focus on economic affairs.

The Palm Springs summit comes in the middle of rising economic frictions that have spurred widespread “Japan-bashing” in the United States and mounting resentment in Japan of what Japanese see as increasingly high-handed American demands thrust upon them.

Although the U.S. trade deficit with Japan declined to $49 billion last year from a peak of $59.8 billion in 1987 while American exports climbed impressively, the continued strength of Japanese exports to the United States has blunted a reduction of the bilateral imbalance. Charging that structural barriers to imports prevent exchange rate adjustments from promoting sales to Japan, the Bush Administration launched the Structural Impediments Initiative last July.

Failure to present a convincing interim SII report, now due in early April, and a final report, which is to be issued in July, could deprive the White House of its “control” over U.S.-Japan relations, Charles Dallara, an assistant Treasury secretary, warned here Friday.

Williams also said that the final SII report “will have a major influence on . . . overall bilateral relations.”

Kaifu’s quick acceptance of Bush’s invitation appeared to be related to his own political problems at home.

Both former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita and former Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe, a ruling party strongman waiting in the wings to succeed Kaifu, are planning visits to Washington in March, during which they had hoped to work out breakthroughs in the logjam of economic issues between the United States and Japan. When Kaifu made a tour of East and West Europe in January, Abe upstaged him with a visit to Moscow that included a meeting with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Kaifu, chosen as a “relief pitcher” for the ruling party last August after all of its front-line bosses were tainted in an influence-buying scandal, comes from the smallest faction of the ruling party and thus has a weak base of support.

Failure to ease U.S.-Japan tensions could lead to an early inner-party move to unseat him and bring in Abe, political analysts agreed.

Although economic frictions are certain to be the focal point of the Bush-Kaifu talks, the prime minister is expected to stress Japan’s intention to play a bigger political role in global diplomacy now that, as he put it in the election campaign, freedom and democracy have replaced military power as the driving force in world affairs.

Kaifu told reporters Saturday that Bush told him on the phone that the President also wants to discuss “the global partnership” of the two countries. Eastern Europe, to which Kaifu pledged more than $2 billion in aid and trade credits during his January tour, is expected to figure prominently in the diplomatic part of the Palm Springs summit.