Japan PM looks set to keep job ahead of election

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's unpopular Prime Minister Taro Aso looks set to keep his job and hold an election next month after calls for a ruling party meeting that could have pushed him to quit hit a roadblock, media said on Friday.

Aso sparked chaos in the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) party when he announced plans for an August 30 general election on Monday, just a day after the party was trounced by the rival Democratic Party in a Tokyo assembly election.

Polls show the LDP will likely lose the general election, ending more than 50 years of almost unbroken rule by the business-friendly LDP and improving chances of resolving a policy deadlock caused by a divided parliament.

A group of LDP rebels called for Aso to resign and presented Secretary-General Hiroyuki Hosoda with a petition calling for a formal party meeting to press their views.

But some lawmakers later withdrew their support for the petition, possibly leaving it short of the required 128 signatures, the Yomiuri Shimbun said. The party may still hold a less formal meeting to discuss the reasons for their defeat in the Tokyo election.

"It is definitely necessary to have a forum to unify our determination to fight under Prime Minister Aso," Agriculture Minister Shigeru Ishiba told broadcaster TBS on Friday.

But he said calls to replace Aso did not make sense because LDP lawmakers had chosen him themselves less than a year ago.

(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds and Linda Sieg; Editing by Chris Gallagher)