Japan’s Besieged Premier Likely to Resign, Run Again : Asia: Hata, battling a no-confidence motion, may accept Socialists’ demand he quit to draw them back to coalition.

Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata, who is battling a no-confidence motion, indicated Thursday that he will resign and run again for prime minister to meet a face-saving demand of the Socialist Party, if the Socialists return to his coalition government.

The Socialists renewed the demand in bargaining that is continuing today on terms for a new coalition that would remain under Hata’s leadership. If the demand is not accepted, Socialist Chairman Tomiichi Murayama said his party would support a no-confidence motion against Hata and insist on holding the vote today.

Television commentators called the demand “hard to understand.” But analysts said the Socialists need the gesture of contrition to justify their return to a government they bolted only eight weeks ago after voting for Hata as prime minister. They then accused him of betraying them for failing to consult them about a shuffle in the makeup of the coalition.

Hata’s resignation would wipe out the no-confidence motion, which was certain to pass without Socialist support of the prime minister.

A Socialist return to the coalition would give the ruling group a razor-thin majority of only one seat in the lower house and would offer no assurance that Hata would win a new election, which would have to be held to pick a prime minister.

As many as 20 Socialists intend to vote against Hata if their party rejoins the coalition, said Minoru Morita, a respected political commentator.

Hata offered to resign in a news conference conducted less than an hour after the upper house approved the 1994 budget and the opposition Liberal Democratic Party submitted its bid to oust him.

Coalition opponents had pledged to uphold a political truce only until the long-delayed budget was enacted.

The Socialists’ offer underscored Hata’s desperation and the peril to his continued rule. Emphasizing the political crisis, Foreign Minister Koji Kakizawa canceled plans to meet U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor in Los Angeles this weekend to conduct trade talks.

Admitting that his Cabinet controlling only 37% of the seats in the lower house was “very weak,” Hata declared that Japan needs a strong government “more than anything else” to tackle a host of urgent issues. Among them, he named tax reform, trade frictions with the United States, suspicions of North Korean development of nuclear weapons and reforms of politics, economics, and the government administration.

“Japan cannot avoid dealing with these issues . . . (that) will fix the direction for the nation’s future,” he said.

He belittled the suggestion that he should seek an alliance with the Liberal Democrats, rather than with the Socialists.

That move, he said, would turn the clock back to a time when the political structure was conservative and concerned with preserving the status quo. “We (the coalition) came into power seeking change,” he said.

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It remains unclear who would run against Hata if an election for prime minister were held. But Morita named Liberal defector Masayoshi Takemura, leader of the splinter New Party Harbinger, as a likely prime minister in any coalition involving the Liberal Democrats and part or all of the Socialists. Takemura, he said, is the only “bridge” figure who could link the two disparate parties without causing splits in both of them.

Takemura’s party joined the ruling coalition in August and voted for Hata in April but refused to join Hata’s Cabinet. Since then, Takemura, a former prefectural (state) governor, has become increasingly critical of the coalition.

In a bid Thursday to sabotage talks between the Socialists and Hata’s followers, Takemura offered to support Socialist Chairman Murayama as prime minister.

Takemura is an archenemy of Ichiro Ozawa, Hata’s chief strategist. While Ozawa supports Japan playing a larger role in international politics and U.N. peacekeeping efforts, Takemura advocates Japan assuming the posture of a “small country that sparkles,” shying away from both overseas military activities and a global leadership role.

Socialist and coalition leaders met three times Thursday and agreed to hold another session this morning. Should the talks break down and the Socialists join the Liberal Democrats in passing a no-confidence motion, Hata is expected to dissolve the lower house and call a general election for either July 24 or July 31, Morita predicted.

Morita said a July election would be an unpredictable, nip-and-tuck battle between Hata’s coalition on one side, and the Liberal Democrats, all or part of the Socialists and Takemura’s New Party Harbinger on the other.

More than any argument over policy, he said, the core of the present political uproar centers on a “generational dispute.” His view is that the aging Liberal Democrat bosses--in league with elder Socialists--struck out against Hata now to hang on to the old system of multi-seat election districts, in which candidates have focused on pork-barrel promises.