Japan PM survives no-confidence vote

TOKYO: Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan survived a no-confidence vote Thursday after pledging to step down once the country is on the road to recovery from the March 11 quake and nuclear disaster.

The promise to hand over power to a younger generation mollified internal party rebels who had threatened to bring down Kan, the country's fifth premier in as many years, days before his first anniversary in the job.

The motion brought by the opposition conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its allies was defeated by a 293-152 margin after most lawmakers of the centre-left ruling party fell into line behind Kan.

Kan, 64, in a last-minute appeal to his fractured Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), urged its lawmakers to stick together until he makes significant progress in rebuilding from Japan's worst post-war emergency.

"Once my handling of the earthquake disaster is settled to some extent and I have fulfilled my role to some extent, I would like younger generations to take over my various responsibilities," said the prime minister, who was due to address local media later Thursday.

Kan, a self-styled "son-of-a-salaryman", or man of the people, offered no precise milestone, leaving his departure date open to interpretation.

The government has promised that most of the 100,000 people still living in shelters since the quake disaster will be in temporary housing by mid-summer, but the wider clean-up and reconstruction is expected to take years.

The operator of the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant has said it hopes to bring its six reactors to "cold shutdown" between October and January, but decommissioning and decontaminating the site will also take far longer. (AFP)