Miyazawa Confirmed as Next Japanese Prime Minister, Calls for Aid to Soviets

Veteran politician Kiichi Miyazawa was confirmed Sunday as prime minister-designate and declared that Japanese “must prepare ourselves” to provide large-scale, long-term financial aid to the Soviet Union.

Speaking at a nationally televised news conference, Miyazawa also said he will:

* Make concessions on Japan’s closed rice market to match any made by the United States and Europe and avoid “destroying” the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations.

* Push enactment of a bill to send noncombat military forces overseas--for the first time since World War II--to participate in disaster relief and U.N. peacekeeping activities.

* Have Japan pay part of the estimated $1-billion cost of a U.N. operation to end hostilities and oversee the installation of a new government in Cambodia.

Miyazawa spoke after the ruling Liberal Democratic Party elected him party president, a post that ensures him the premiership. Parliament will be convened Nov. 5 to elect him prime minister, succeeding Toshiki Kaifu.

Kaifu was chosen two years ago to head the party after other leading Japanese politicians were tainted by an influence-buying scandal. But he lacked his own strong power base.

Miyazawa, 72, is a veteran of 49 years in government and politics who has served as Japan’s top official in finance, foreign affairs, international trade and industry and economic planning. He won 285 votes in the party election, or 57% of the total.

Although the outcome was ensured 16 days ago when Miyazawa won the support of the party’s largest faction, loyal to former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, his margin of victory fell slightly below expectations.

Miyazawa won only 49.5% of the votes of the party’s rank-and-file in nationwide balloting to choose 101 electors and failed to win full support from the Takeshita faction’s members of Parliament. An estimated 15 Takeshita followers broke ranks to support Miyazawa’s two rivals--a harbinger of potential party unrest.

Michio Watanabe, 68, beat Hiroshi Mitsuzuka, 64, in the race for second place, winning nearly a third of the rank-and-file votes and 120, or 24%, of the final votes. Mitsuzuka, head of the party’s second-largest faction, received only 82 votes, or 16.5%. Four ballots were declared invalid.

In the final election, 395 party members of Parliament and 101 electors cast ballots.

In his news conference, Miyazawa supported extending large-scale, long-term loans to the Soviet Union but said that Moscow must first draw up a blueprint for reform and reveal basic economic data. Such aid--which would be given as part of a joint effort by the Group of Seven advanced industrial democracies--would go beyond a $2.5-billion pledge Japan made earlier this month for humanitarian and technical assistance, he said.

As examples of new aid, Miyazawa mentioned the establishment of a “ruble-stabilization fund,” loans for the purchase of goods to ease a shift to a market economy and “social infrastructure capital.”

“It is very desirable that the Soviet Union, or whatever that country will be called, should become a peace-minded nation with a market economy. Japan must assist that (change),” he said. Such good will would help persuade Moscow to conclude a peace treaty with Japan, he added.

A precondition set by Japan for the signing of the peace treaty is the return of the four Kuril islands that Moscow seized after World War II. Japan would make clear to the Soviet islanders that their “lives will get better” with reversion to Japan, he said.

Miyazawa acknowledged that Japan, after examining the reaction from the United States and Europe, will have to respond to a proposal now being drawn up by the secretary general of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) for an opening of agricultural markets in the Uruguay Round of multinational trade negotiations.

Against a track record of ruling party opposition to importing “even a single grain of rice,” Miyazawa’s decision on the ultra-sensitive issue could bring his first major domestic test. Two days earlier, his rival Mitsuzuka spoke out against any compromise, saying that “rice is Japan’s culture.”

The new leader said he will seek Parliament’s approval of bills to allow the overseas dispatch of noncombat troops to participate in disaster relief and peacekeeping operations but ruled out any participation in U.N.-supervised disarmament of Cambodian troops. Without mentioning a specific sum, he said that Japan “must make a contribution” to help cover the estimated $1-billion cost of the massive U.N. effort to end hostilities in Cambodia and set up a new government. He predicted that the process would last “between a year and a half and two years.”