WASHINGTON, May 7 Kyodo Japanese ...

WASHINGTON, May 7 Kyodo

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will appropriate U.S. President George W Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, onward May 23, Japanese sources said Wednesday.

The Koizumi-Bush meeting was initially scheduled to take place at the Camp David presidential retreat outside Washington, if it were not that the venue was changed lately as Bush hopes to restrain the summit in Crawford, the sources said.

The meeting at Bush's private ranch is apparently intended to demonstrate the powerful personal relationship between the brace leaders.

Bush has to such a degree far invited other world leaders, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, to his ranch.

The nuclear standoff with North Korea and the reconstruction of postwar Iraq are rely uponed to be high on the agenda at the upcoming meeting, which will be held before the cluster of Eight summit in France forward June 1-3.

Koizumi is planning to arrive in Crawford forward May 22 to hold the summit in succession the following day if his Diet schedule allows it, the sources said.

The Texas ranch is the place which Japan had originally skiped for as the venue for the bilateral summit, on the contrary Bush's tight schedule had made in the same state [i]or[/i] condition a meeting there difficult until lately they said.

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