Japan's prime minister to resign

TOKYO -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose year-old government has suffered a string of damaging scandals and a humiliating electoral defeat, has told ruling party leaders he intends to resign, an official said Wednesday.

Tadamori Oshima, parliamentary affairs chief for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said Abe would make a statement later in the day.

"Unfortunately, he will announce that he will resign," Oshima told party members.

National broadcaster NHK said Abe made the announcement in a morning meeting with ruling party leaders, citing unidentified top officials of the Liberal Democratic Party. Other TV networks carried similar reports.

Abe, whose support rating has fallen to 30 percent, said he was stepping down because he lacked the power to rally people together, NHK quoted LDP Secretary-General Taro Aso as telling reporters.

Word of Abe's resignation comes after his scandal-scarred government lost control of the upper house of parliament to the resurgent opposition in July 29 elections. The LDP still controls the more powerful lower house, which chooses the prime minister.

Abe, 52, a nationalist who entered office as Japan's youngest postwar premier, was to quit as he was facing a battle in parliament over his efforts to extend the country's refueling mission in support of the U.S.-led operation in Afghanistan.

Reports he would step down also come just days after Abe said he would quit if he failed to win parliamentary passage of legislation extending the Afghan mission, in which Japanese ships refuel coalition vessels in the Indian Ocean.

The plenary session of the lower house was to be delayed, media reports said, but an official of the lower house said she could not confirm that.

Abe's resignation would mark a rapid fall from power for a prime minister who came into office a year ago with ambitious plans to repair frayed relations with Asian neighbors, revise the 1947 pacifist constitution, and bolster Japan's role in international diplomatic and military affairs.

The prime minister, whose grandfather was premier and whose father was a foreign minister, initially met with success in fence-mending trips last autumn to China and South Korea.

But a string of scandals starting late last year quickly eroded support for Abe. Four Cabinet minister were forced to resign over the past nine months, and one -- his first agriculture minister -- committed suicide over a money scandal.