Japan's Floundering Abe Fights for Floating Gas Station
Refueling Operation Is Vulnerable to Domestic Power Plays

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 8, 2007; A09

TOKYO, Sept. 7 -- For the election-battered, scandal-plagued and competence-challenged government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, it has come down to this: If he cannot keep a floating gas station open in the Indian Ocean, Abe may be finished as the leader of Japan.

The high-seas refueling operation has been Japan's principal contribution to the war in Afghanistan. Over the past six years, Japanese military tanker ships cruising far from home have pumped more than 127 million gallons of fuel, free of charge, much of it into U.S. warships hunting for terrorists and smugglers.

Yet in recent weeks the gas station has become a political cudgel. Emboldened by polls showing that about half of the Japanese public wants the fueling operation stopped, a surging opposition party has seized on the issue as a way of felling Abe, who has been in office less than a year.

The Democratic Party of Japan clobbered the prime minister's ruling party in a July election and took control of the upper house of the legislature. Forcing Abe to halt fuel deliveries would be a highly visible way for the opposition to demonstrate the prime minister's political infirmity to a public that, according to polls, already doubts his judgment on appointees and his administrative competence.

As they try to fight back, Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party are hobbled by low poll numbers and prickly domestic problems of their own creation.

A champion of strong ties between Japan and the United States, Abe argues that giving fuel to Americans and other allies shows the world that Japan is a reliable partner in fighting terrorism. "We must do everything we can to somehow continue this operation that is regarded highly by the international community," he said this week.

These are bumpy times, though, for Japan's traditionally close relationship with the United States. Polls show the growing unpopularity of the Bush administration, of its war in Iraq and of a U.S.-Japan tie that is widely perceived as one of master and servant.

Then there are the seemingly endless scandals in Abe's government. Since his election last September, he has been forced to replace five cabinet members.

He has found it especially hard to hold on to a minister of agriculture. One killed himself in May after allegations that he had illegally used public funds. Another resigned in August in an unrelated scandal. A third, named in late August after a cabinet reshuffle intended to show that Abe was finally getting serious about governing, lasted a week before questionable use of public money forced him to quit.

There are also questions about Abe's competence. He has struggled to restore public confidence in the government since it was revealed last spring that more than 50 million pension records had been misfiled. Rural voters, the ruling party's traditional base, have also expressed a sense of abandonment as their economic well-being slipped in recent years.

Taken together, analysts say, those problems have put the Liberal Democratic Party -- which has dominated postwar Japanese politics -- in an unprecedentedly weak position. The Democratic Party is demanding that Abe call an early general election, which polls suggest his party would lose.

Traditionally, prime ministers here have resigned after the kind of humiliating defeat Abe endured in July, but he has insisted on staying in office.

The gas station brouhaha will take center stage in Tokyo on Monday, when the legislature is scheduled to convene an extraordinary session to extend the anti-terrorism law authorizing continued funding for an oil tanker and a destroyer now in the Indian Ocean. The law expires Nov. 1.

Abe has abundant international support among countries worried about surging Taliban activity in Afghanistan. President Bush has joined the leaders of Germany and Pakistan and the British foreign minister in urging Japan to continue to help out in the Indian Ocean.

Pakistan, the one Islamic country in the coalition of naval forces operating in the Indian Ocean, has said that without the Japanese fuel -- which has cost taxpayers here close to $190 million -- it would have to withdraw its destroyer from patrolling in the region.

That prospect deeply worries the United States, according to J. Thomas Schieffer, the U.S. ambassador to Japan.

"If Japan decides not to continue this operation, you will basically knock Pakistan out of the coalition," Schieffer said this week in Washington. "We think it sends a tremendous message to Afghanistan and all of the Middle East that a Muslim nation is prepared to undertake this effort against terrorism."

Schieffer tried last month to persuade the leader of the Democratic Party, Ichiro Ozawa, to see the big-picture value of Japan's fueling operation.

Ozawa, though, was not in a mood to agree. Emboldened by an electoral victory that for the first time since World War II put an opposition party in control of a house in the legislature, he chided the U.S. ambassador in front of the Japanese press corps.

"The United States started the Afghan war without waiting to obtain the agreement of the international community," he said, arguing that without authorization from the United Nations, Japan cannot under its constitution participate in military operations.

The constitution forbids the use of force in settling international disputes, but its interpretation has been stretched in recent years to allow Japan to provide troops for U.N.-authorized peacekeeping operations.

There is some irony in Ozawa's opposition to the gas station. After the Persian Gulf War, he wrote a book that argued for a robust foreign policy and criticized Japan for just giving money to the coalition that defeated Saddam Hussein.

In any case, political analysts agree that the gas station dispute is about power politics, not Japan's international image.

"Abe is pinning his political life on the extension of the anti-terrorism law, and if he fails, it will be the end of him as prime minister," said Minoru Morita, a veteran political analyst in Tokyo. "And Ozawa has said he will block passage of this law. If he does not stand by his promise, then public confidence in him and his party will diminish."

Under the rules of the Japanese legislature, Ozawa's party has the power to delay passage of the anti-terrorism law until after it expires Nov. 1.

A U.S. government official here said that negotiations are continuing to persuade Ozawa to strike a deal that will save the operation.

But at this point, several analysts agreed, Ozawa is most interested in closing the gas station to bring Abe down.

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.