New LDP chief Abe vows patriotic education, bigger international role

New LDP chief Abe vows patriotic education, bigger international role Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, who eyes a larger role for Japan on the world stage, won a landslide victory in the ruling party's leadership election Wednesday, paving the way for him to be picked as Japan's youngest postwar premier next week in parliament.

Abe vowed in his first news conference as Liberal Democratic Party president to place priority in the upcoming parliament session to extend a special law enabling Japanese troops to support U.S.-led antiterrorism operations in the Indian Ocean and pass a bill to drastically reform education to instill patriotism in Japanese classrooms.

'I declare that I will, as the first party president to be born after World War II, take over the flame of reform,' Abe told a gathering of LDP lawmakers after the results were announced. 'I vow to devote myself in working with you all toward creating a new and beautiful nation.'

Abe said he will decide on the party leadership lineup Monday and his new cabinet on Tuesday, when the Diet will pick him as Japan's new premier to succeed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. A focus of attention is whether Abe will bow to party politics and distribute posts among factions, a traditional practice that Koizumi broke.

Winning 464 of 703 votes from party lawmakers and members, the 51-year-old Abe defeated Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki and Foreign Minister Taro Aso to become the LDP president. Aso scored 136 votes and Tanigaki got 102. One of the 403 lawmaker ballots was invalid.

But while he won with an overwhelming victory with two-thirds of all votes, it was short of his camp's target of getting more than 500 ballots.

With a three-year term to September 2009, Abe will be faced with the daunting tasks of repairing Japan's soured relations with China and South Korea, and raising taxes to rebuild debt-ridden state finances and fund social welfare. The LDP is also expected to face a"