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Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi attacked the media Thursday for criticizing his visits to a war shrine seen by many in Asia as a symbol of the country's past militarism, as his heir apparent defended such pilgrimages.

Speculation is mounting that Koizumi will visit Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where wartime leaders convicted as war criminals are honored along with Japan's 2.5 million war dead, on the symbolic August 15 anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe Shinzo, increasingly seen as a shoo-in to succeed Koizumi as prime minister next month, defended such visits in an interview published the same day, although he has refused to say whether he will visit if he becomes premier.

Koizumi promised during his successful campaign to become ruling party chief in 2001 that he would visit Yasukuni on August 15, a pledge widely seen as intended to woo political support from a powerful association of relatives of war dead.

He has visited the shrine each year since, but avoided the anniversary in an apparent effort to moderate Asian outrage.

"If I do keep my public promises, they (media) criticize me and if I do not keep my public promises, they criticize," Koizumi told reporters before leaving for a two-day visit to Mongolia.

"It's not just August 15, they always criticize no matter when I visit. It's the same whenever I go.... Japan's media should wake up. There are pros and cons."

But Koizumi, who said on Wednesday that promises should be kept, declined to say directly whether or when he would go.

"I will make an appropriate decision," he said. "I always do that."

Koizumi came under fire in 2003 when he said during a parliamentary debate with an opposition leader that it was "no big deal" to break campaign pledges.

Most mainstream Japanese media have criticized Koizumi's annual visits to the shrine, which have markedly chilled ties with China and the Republic of Korea. Both countries have refused to hold leaders' summits with Japan as a result.

Many Japanese business leaders, worried about the impact of the diplomatic chill on vital economic ties with China, would also like the shrine visits to stop.

In May, the Japan Association of Corporate Executives, a business lobby, publicly urged the prime minister not to go.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao on Monday urged Japan to stop visits by its leaders to the shrine.

But Koizumi defended his position, saying he visited to pray for peace. "I think it is natural that Japan's prime minister visits Yasukuni to pledge not to wage war again and express his condolences for the war dead," he said.

Abe, who media reports said visited the shrine in secret in April, supported the visits.

"I certainly do not think that the prime minister visiting the shrine implies agreement with or admiration of the aims of the war 60 years ago," he said in an interview with the Bungei Shunju magazine.

(China Daily August 11, 2006)