German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday tried to persuade Japan's opposition leader to back an extension of his country's military mission in Afghanistan, according to DPA. Ichiro Ozawa, head of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, told Merkel he opposed the extension of the mission to refuel ships in the Indian Ocean, which expires on November 1, the party said in a statement reported by the Kyodo news agency. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government is having difficulty winning the support of the opposition to extend a law to continue the deployment. "Japan's refuelling mission contributes to German navy vessels and is also sought by the international community," Abe said Thursday. "I plan to explain those things to the Democrats." The Democratic Party of Japan gained control of the upper house of parliament from Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party in July 29 elections. Ozawa has argued that broader United Nations authorization is needed for Japan to engage in the military mission. Earlier Thursday, Merkel, who arrived in Japan from China on Wednesday, was received by Emperor Akihito before giving a speech on climate control at a business symposium in Tokyo. The German chancellor is seeking to establish binding worldwide climate-protection targets in the next few years. She laid out a model on how to do so ahead of a conference in December in Bali that was expected to get talks rolling on sealing a deal by 2009 on fighting global warming that would succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. It isn't sufficient if each country says it is doing as much as it can, Merkel said in her speech, adding that what is needed is "qualifable reduction goals" to decrease carbon dioxide emissions. Merkel also proposed for the first time publicly that limits should be put on greenhouse gas production by developing countries, such as China and India. She said that the long-term goal should be that every person on the planet would be allowed to produce the same amount of carbon dioxide and the per-capita output in developing countries should not rise above that in industrialized nations. The industrialized countries have it within their grasp to substantially reduce their energy consumption, which would also lead to a reduction in per-capita energy use, Merkel said without defining a ceiling for worldwide per-capita energy consumption. The developing countries, therefore, have the task of reining in their output of pollution by using "intelligent growth" strategies, the chancellor said. Merkel stressed the key role the United States would play in the upcoming climate talks, saying that if Washington does not get on board, other countries like China and India, which are rapidly increasingly their output of greenhouse gases, would also not participate. The United States, which has balked at setting greenhouse gas caps under the presidency of George W Bush, has long been the biggest producer of greenhouse gases in the world, but by some accounts, China surpassed it this year with its booming, inefficient industry. Merkel hailed the agreement made in June in Germany in which the Group of Eight established industrialized countries agreed to halve their greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, saying it was a milestone that approximated concrete reduction targets, which the United States could no longer so easily make "disappear." Merkel praised the Japanese government's engagement on climate change after she and Abe pledged Wednesday that their countries would be at the vanguard of efforts aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. Merkel also discussed the environment and climate change during her half-hour audience with the emperor at the Imperial Palace. During her three-day stay in Japan, the German chancellor is also to visit Kyoto and Osaka.
