Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will go all-out in the 150-day Diet session that convened Friday to push his long-cherished, but highly contentious, plan to privatize the nation's postal services.
Koizumi is expected to face rough going before the government can submit postal privatization bills to the Diet -- hopefully by mid-March. His biggest obstacle will be his own Liberal Democratic Party, a majority of whose members oppose his plan.
Koizumi wants to divide Japan Post into four units -- postal delivery, postal savings, postal life insurance and post office network management -- when the privatization process begins in 2007.