Japan’s new cabinet faces major challenges

(Vatican Radio) A new government was today sworn in, in Japan, after conservatives won a landslide victory in a parliamentary election there. As Alastair Wankyn reports from Tokyo, the legacy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster is only one of many problems facing Japan's new leaders. Listen:

To spend Japan's economy out of deflation and recession. He's promising too to speed up recovery work in areas hit by last year's tsunami and nuclear disaster, where tens of thousands of people are still living in temporary accommodation.

And he said stepping up Japan's alliance with the United States is the key to stable diplomacy in this part of Asia.

Abe's Liberal Democratic Party comes to power here after voters deserted the outgoing Democratic Party of Japan, frustrated with its performance in government.

The new government is conservative and is considered less likely to stand by silently faced with a newly assertive China.

But it inherits many problems with no easy solutions, such as the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Just this week the plant's operating company announced a further delay in cleaning contaminated water because it some storage tanks there are proving to be too flimsy to be used.

But the new government is likely to reverse the previous administration's pledge to pull the plug on nuclear power. That change could prove unpopular with many voters, thousands of whom are mounting weekly anti-nuclear protests here in Tokyo.