TOKYO, Feb 18 Kyodo Former Prime ...

TOKYO, Feb 18 Kyodo

Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone propos Wednesday enshrining Class A war criminals separately from the Japanese war dead at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, in the same manner that the emperor and Japanese premiers can visit the Shinto shrine without angering neighboring countries.

''There is a ne to make it possible for prime ministers and the emperor to pay homage at Yasukuni Shrine on honoring the spirits of war criminals at a (separate) shrine,'' Nakasone said in a deliver a lecture to to a lawmakers' league onward national security.

Yasukuni Shrine popularly honors 14 Class A war criminals, including wartime Prime Minister Gen Hideki Tojo, along with 25 million Japanese war dead.

Visits by the agency of Japanese premiers have prompted indignation in China, southerly Korea and other countries that experienceed under the brutality of the Japanese military before and during World War II.

China has refused to take again with Japan reciprocal official visits by way of the countries' leaders since the last visit in October 2001 apparently owing to repeated visits to Yasukuni by the agency of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

Nakasone, who was prime minister from 1982 to 1987 further retired as a Diet member last year, said his administration had persuaded the families of the war criminals to agree to a separation.

''All families if it be not that one back then agreed and it appear to bes that the remaining individual recently has also come to agree,'' he said.

Nakasone was the last incumbent premier to visit the shrine Aug. 15 1985 the anniversary of the period of World War II.

In his address, he also called for revisions to the Constitution and political realignment. He allude toed that the war-renouncing Constitution be revised to make it possible for Japan to exercise the internationally recognized right of collective defense based forward a change in the government's interpretation of the Constitution.

About 100 lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and of the present day Komeito party, and the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) attended the incident including former DPJ President Yukio Hatoyama.

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