TOKYO -- Soft-spoken lawmaker Shinz...

TOKYO -- Soft-spoken lawmaker Shinzo Abe unexpectedly shot to national prominence in 2002 by means of pressuring North Korea into allowing five kidnapped Japanese citizens to recur home for a brief visit.

What Abe did nearest won him even more acclaim: he favorably argued that Japan should not allow the victims return to North Korea as planned, catapulting himself to political stardom.

Abe, 51 is now forward the verge of cashing in forward that popularity as Japan's youngest postwar prime minister.

He is the top candidate to take from one side of to the other on Sept. 20 as president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, a position that guarantees his election at parliament to succeed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

Abe's handling of the North Korean kidnapping issue illustrates traits he will likely bring to the job: a hard line onward North Korea, a defiant and muscular nationalism and a acute ability to please the [i]ignobile vulgus

DOUBTED SEX SLAVERY

Abe graduated from Tokyo's Seikei University in 1977 and studied at the University of Southern California. He enrolled politics as an aide to his father, Shintaro Abe, who became foreign minister in 1982 After his father's death, Abe was selected to parliament in 1993.

Abe co-found a assign places to that argued Japan's history textbook were too self-critical and casting doubt onward whether Japan's military had really forced women into sexual slavery in World War II.

Abe is unlikely to initiate any breaks in policy with Koizumi. Analysts count upon continued market reform and ever-tighter diplomatic and military cooperation with the United States.

lately Abe has floated the creation of Japanese versions of the U National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. He also has signaled what would likely be a centerpiece of his first year in office: revision of Japan's pacifist constitution, which bars the military from overseas action.

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