A special session of Japan's parliament re-elected Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister Wednesday, clearing the way for him to press on with a reform programme including privatization of the postal system after his party's landslide election victory this month.

Koizumi, who took office in April 2001, was chosen by members of the 480-seat lower house, where his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) took a commanding 296 seats in the September 11 general election, ensuring he would remain prime minister.

Koizumi called the election after rebels in his own party voted with the opposition in the upper house to kill bills to privatize Japan Post, a financial services giant with US$3 trillion in assets.

He had cast the election as a referendum on postal privatization, which he considers the core of his reform agenda.

"I have been promoting structural reform until now, and I want to put it on a solid track," Koizumi told a news conference after the lower house voted for him to remain prime minister.

Ahead of the vote, Koizumi's cabinet tendered their resignations, but all were expected to be reappointed later in the day.

Koizumi, who has said he has no plans to stay on once his tenure as party president expires next September, has said he will quickly re-submit the postal bills and he is expected to reshuffle the cabinet once they are passed.

The bills are expected to be voted on in October and look certain to get through. Parliament will sit until November 1.

The landslide win on September 11 gave the LDP, which has governed Japan for most of the last half century, its first majority in an election in 15 years.

The postal reforms were defeated in the upper house, whose members serve fixed terms, but several upper house members who did not support the bills have said they will now back them given the scale of the LDP victory.

Source: China Daily