‘Drunk’ Nakagawa agrees to quit

Was he drunk or did a combination of jet lag and cough mixture prove too much for Shoichi Nakagawa, the Japanese Finance Minister? He has resigned anyway after video footage of his shambolic press conference at the recent G7 summit in Rome has spread like wildfire amid rumours that he has long had a drinking problem.

Nakagawa got his resignation in before an Opposition-led censure motion in the Japanese parliament on Wednesday, which he was bound to lose.

At a press conference today, at which he apologised "for causing such a big fuss", he stuck to his original story - that he was suffering from jetlag after the long flight from Tokyo and that he had been taking cough mixture which exacerbated the problem.

However, in a hint that the drinking rumours might not be wide of the mark, he suggested that he might soon hospitalise himself in order to "prevent myself doing any further damage". Yoshiro Mori, the former prime minister, said yesterday that he was aware of Nakagawa's "fondness for a drink" and had warned him not to overdo things.

Nakagawa is not going immediately: he has vowed to stay on until parliament passes a supplementary budget aimed at getting Japan out of recession. The country yesterday announced a calamitious plunge of 12.7 per cent in GDP for the last quarter, so he has his work cut out. ·