Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi reiterated his resolve on Wednesday to privatize Japan Post and further advance the structural reform he has promoted.

"Solemnly accepting the voice of the people, I will take it upon myself to realize postal privatization and would like to put the course of structural reform on a solid track," Koizumi said as the new opposition leader Seiji Maehara questioned him at the outset of the House of Representatives plenary session.

As for other issues he intends to tackle, Koizumi again listed reform of state-run financial institutions, fiscal decentralization, a cut in government personnel costs and fiscal rehabilitation.

A week after the 42-day special Diet session began following the lower house election, Koizumi took questions from leaders of the ruling and opposition parties on the policy speech he delivered Monday reiterating his resolve on postal privatization.

Maehara, the 43-year-old successor to Katsuya Okada who stepped down from the leadership post of the largest opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) for taking responsibility for DPJ's election defeat, criticized Koizumi's reform as "an empty slogan without substance".

In response to Maehara's criticism that the government's postal bills, submitted Monday, would lead to further expanding public postal funds rather than diverting them to the private sector as Koizumi aims, the premier hit back at the alternative postal bill the DPJ plans to submit to parliament.

The DPJ has proposed lowering the 10 million yen (88,500 US dollars) cap on postal savings per person to 7 million yen (62,000 dollars), but Koizumi said a "fast and furious" reduction in management will make it difficult to maintain the current network of post offices and postal employment.

The government bills are designed to make the size of postal funds into an appropriate one through market mechanisms while keeping the post office network, he said.

Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party overwhelmed the DPJ in the election, causing DPJ's first setback since its formation in 1996 and taking more than two-thirds of the seats in the powerful lower chamber along with its ruling coalition partner, the New Komeito party.

Source: Xinhua