Former Japan PM Koizumi announces retirement

TOKYO (AP) - Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, known for his flamboyant style and love of Elvis Presley, said Saturday he is retiring from politics.

Koizumi, 66, was Japan's third-longest-serving post-World War II leader. He told his supporters that he would give up his parliamentary seat in the next elections, which could take place as early as November.

"I am not going to run in the next general elections," Koizumi, who still serves as a lower house lawmaker, told a meeting in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo.

Kyodo News agency reported Saturday that Koizumi's 27-year-old second son, Shinjiro, would run for the seat from his father's constituency in the next elections. Officials from Koizumi's office could not be reached for comment.

During his five years in office from 2001 to 2006, Koizumi, known for his long silver hair, enjoyed stellar public support and took major policy steps.

He boosted ties with Japan's top ally, the United States, by sending troops to Iraq in 2004 on a humanitarian, noncombat mission in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion. The dispatch was Japan's largest military mission overseas since the end of World War II and came amid a push by Koizumi's government to revise the postwar pacifist constitution.

Koizumi also pushed Japan to provide logistical maritime support for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

But Japan's relations with two key Asian neighbors, China and South Korea, deteriorated under Koizumi because of his annual trips to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine. China and South Korea vilify the shrine for its links to past Japanese militarism. Yasukuni honors Japan's war dead, including executed war criminals.

Koizumi became the first Japanese prime minister to visit North Korea, making trips in September 2002 and May 2004.

On the domestic front, Koizumi's government made structural and administrative reforms, including a plan to privatize the sprawling postal savings and insurance service.

Koizumi also re-engineered the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's image from a staid conglomeration of politicians into a dynamic party of reform.

He led the party to victory in lower house elections in September 2005, vanquishing the formerly up-and-coming Democratic Party and giving the ruling camp an unrivaled grip on power.

In 2006, Koizumi traveled with President Bush to Elvis Presley's Graceland mansion, where he won over his host with an Elvis impersonation.