Junichiro Koizumi was reelected prime minister at an extraordinary parliamentary session on Wednesday.

Koizumi remained all cabinet members unchanged as he had said that the reshuffle would not happen at least until the end of the special session on Nov. 1.

At a press conference after his reelection, Koizumi said, "I would like to put on a firm track the structural reform that I have been promoting on the basis of a stable coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito party."

Koizumi obtained 340 votes in the House of Representatives and 134 votes in the House of Councilors.

Prior to the vote, Yohei Kono was reelected as lower house speaker.

During the session, Koizumi will seek the passage of the postal privatization bills and the extension of Japan's assistance to the US-led anti-terrorism operations in Afghanistan.

The postal reform bills failed to clear the upper house in August because the opposition from within LDP lawmakers. However, the bills are almost certain to be passed as the ruling bloc's superiority in lawmaker numbers in the lower house can override voting result in the upper house.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda told a press conference earlier in the day that the government will continue provide logistic support to US-led anti-terrorism operations in Afghanistan for another year.

Japan passed a legislation soon after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States, sending ships to the Indian Ocean to support the US-led troops. The mission has been extended in 2003 for another two years to the end of 2005.

At the press conference, Koizumi also cited fiscal decentralization, reining in government personnel costs and Japan's reconstruction aid to Iraq as issues he will address during his remaining one-year term.

The ruling alliance won a landslide victory in the lower house election on Sept. 11. They secured an absolute majority of 327 seats in the 480-seat House of Representatives, with the DPJ alone garnering 296 seats.

Koizumi, who took power in April 2001, has said he would step down from the premiership when his tenure as LDP leader ends next September.

A survey of the Yomiuri Shimbun daily showed Wednesday that the support rate for Koizumi's cabinet rose surged 14.3 percentage points to 62 percent.

However, the survey also found that much most people prefer social security system reform and effective economic measures as the priorities of his administration, rather than the postal privatization.

Source: Xinhua