Moderate wins ruling party vote

? Veteran moderate Yasuo Fukuda easily won election as Japan’s ruling party president Sunday, pledging to keep a pro-U.S. foreign policy and improve ties with Asia after he almost certainly becomes prime minister later this week.

Fukuda, the 71-year-old son of a prime minister from the 1970s and a former right-hand man to two premiers, won 63 percent of the vote among Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers and delegates, beating his lone rival, former Foreign Minister Taro Aso.

The win essentially guarantees Fukuda’s election as outgoing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s successor in parliament on Tuesday because of the LDP’s vast majority in the lower house, the more powerful of the two chambers that elects the premier.

Fukuda vowed on Sunday to rebuild the popularity of his party, which has suffered a year of scandals and policy missteps by outgoing Abe, who has been hospitalized since announcing on Sept. 12 that he would resign.

“You have chosen me even though I do not have much experience. I am prepared to do my utmost to live up to my responsibilities,” Fukuda said. “I will work to revitalize the LDP, to win back public trust, and push forward with my policies.”

Fukuda’s key policies include engaging North Korea diplomatically, pushing for extension of Japan’s naval mission in support of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, and giving aid to rural regions left behind by the economic recovery.

“We need to show our intention to continue the mission as a message to the international society,” Fukuda said of the Afghan mission, which the opposition has vowed to defeat in parliament. “If this drags on too long we might send a wrong message to the world as if we were not committed to making that contribution.”

Fukuda, who served as chief Cabinet secretary from 2000 to 2004, has the support of the major factions of the LDP. His dominance over Aso, a hawk who served as Abe’s foreign minister until August, was so clear by Sunday that morning papers had already given him the title of LDP president, and he was asked on NHK if he would choose Aso as his foreign minister.

Fukuda would inherit a political environment and LDP left in serious disarray.