Japan's Koike says time could come for female PM

TOKYO (Reuters) - Former defense minister Yuriko Koike isn't saying she wants to become Japan's first female prime minister, but she isn't ruling it out, either.

Koike, 55, is among a clutch of lawmakers whose names have been floated as possible contenders for Japan's top job if unpopular Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is replaced before an election due by late 2009, but which could come sooner.

"I have never expressed such an intention (to run for prime minister)," Koike, who served just eight weeks as Japan's first woman defense minister last year, told Reuters in an interview this week.

"That is an option that is impossible in the (ruling) Liberal Democratic Party," added Koike, dressed in a dark pin-stripe suit and pausing during the interview to answer her pink cell phone.

"I don't have money and I'm not a thoroughbred. I'm not the grandchild of a prime minister," she added, referring to an LDP tradition of tapping scions of political dynasties for the post.

Fukuda is the son of a prime minister and his predecessor Shinzo Abe was the grandson of a premier, as is former foreign minister Taro Aso, seen as frontrunner to get the position next.

Political analysts say Koike is a long-shot for the post, and the former TV announcer, who graduated from Cairo University and speaks fluent Arabic and English, would certainly face considerable obstacles in a political arena dominated by men.

Still, Koike said the tide could shift.

"When the LDP changes, there will be various chances, not only me," Koike said. "At the necessary time ... the person who reforms or leads the country might just happen to be a woman"

Whether Koike gets a shot at the premiership also depends on the fate of Fukuda, whose ratings have sunk below 20 percent on doubts about leadership in the face of a divided parliament, where the opposition-controlled upper house can delay laws.

Some pundits think the 71-year-old moderate may be nudged out after hosting a Group of Eight summit in July.

Koike steered clear of predicting Fukuda's future, but said a general election was highly unlikely this year given the risk that the ruling bloc would lose.

CLEARER VISION

Koike said Fukuda should articulate his policy vision for the nation more clearly in order to revive his sagging ratings.

"He needs to show a vision to the people, a vision of Japan, what direction it should go in and what it should do," she said.

A former environment minister who launched Japan's annual summer "Cool Biz" campaign to encourage people to dress down to cut the use of air conditioners and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Koike urged Fukuda to show leadership on global warming.

Japan should announce a medium-term target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25 percent by 2020 to enable it to take the lead as host of the G8 summit, where global warming is high on the agenda, she said.

"Japan is the summit chairman, and if it doesn't set its own target, how can it encourage other countries?" she said.

Japanese officials have said the time is not right to set a target for 2020, a focus of debate in U.N.-led talks on a treaty to fight global warming after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

Leading on environmental policies, mobilizing Japan's huge private financial assets and activating "women power" are a triad of topics that Koike said she sees as top priorities if Japan is to compensate for its ageing, shrinking population.

China's bulging military budget and North Korea's nuclear ambitions are key concerns on the security front, said Koike, who served as a national security adviser to the hawkish Abe but whose stint as defense minister was cut short by a bitter public row over her attempt to replace the ministry's top bureaucrat, who is now on trial on charges of accepting bribes.

Koike, who began her political career in a small pro-reform party at the core of a anti-LDP coalition that briefly took power in 1993, said momentum for another shake up of Japan's political landscape could well build after the next general election.

Both the LDP and its main rival, the Democratic Party of Japan, are home to lawmakers with a wide range of views on basic issues such as defense and the role of government in society.

"It depends on the results of the next election," she said of the prospects for political realignment.

"But considering how things have gone in the past, there was no case where things went as expected, so predictions might be meaningless. We need to see the results and the momentum."

(Editing by Rodney Joyce)