Beckett to Focus on Climate Change on Japan Visit

The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, is expected to call on Japan to sign up to more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets as part of the international fight against climate change , when she arrives in Tokyo next week.

Climate change is expected to be a major theme of Ms Beckett's three-day trip, which comes ahead of next month's G8 summit in Germany. She will meet the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, before holding talks with her counterpart, Taro Aso.

She will also address a Tokyo conference on climate change, where senior executives from BP, Tesco and Barclays Capital will discuss the business community's attempts to reduce their carbon footprint with Japanese counterparts from Toyota and Tokyo Electric Power.

With climate change also expected to dominate next year's G8 summit in Japan, Ms Beckett is reportedly keen to press Tokyo into agreeing to commitments that go beyond those it has already made under the Kyoto protocol.

"The EU has agreed to ambitious targets for climate change, but the Japanese haven't committed themselves to targets of that kind," a British official in Tokyo said on condition of anonymity. "They have commitments under Kyoto, but as the G8 chair in 2008 they will have an even more critical role ... we need a broad agreement by 2009."

The official said that Britain had been encouraged by the interest in the environment shown recently by Mr Abe. "You get the sense that the Japanese government is engaged," he said, but added: "Targets are part of the answer, but they need to be backed up with policies."

Ms Beckett, who has warned the UN security council of the dangers posed by climate change, is also expected to discuss how both countries can persuade the US to do more to reduce its carbon emissions.

"[The Japanese] don't want to be antagonistic but we would like to move as far as we can to find common ground with the US, the official said.

Ms Beckett, who has made the environment a key part of her foreign policy portfolio, warned last week that climate change could prompt new conflicts centered on competition for water supplies and other resources.

"Resource-based conflicts are not new," she told the Royal United Services Institute in London. "But in climate change we have a new and potentially disastrous dynamic."

Writing in today's Yomiuri newspaper, the foreign secretary said that Britain's political leadership on the environment and Japan's record on technology and energy efficiency should be harnessed to set an example to the rest of the world.

"We can't afford to get it wrong," she said. "The costs for all of us are too high. Nor can we wait. If we lead others will follow."

Ms Beckett may also use talks with Mr Abe and Mr Aso to bring up the stalled investigation into the murder of Lindsay Ann Hawker, the 22-year-old British woman whose body was found in a bathtub full of sand in an apartment near Tokyo in March. Japanese police have been criticized for failing to detain the man accused of killing her, Tatsuya Ichihashi, who fled when they arrived at his apartment to question him.

"[Ms Hawker] is still very much in our minds," the official said. "The police motivation is still to catch someone who was responsible for a very nasty murder. I don't think they are worried about their international image."