PM promotes business and rugby in Tokyo

TOKYO - Prime Minister John Key finished his speech to a business forum in Tokyo yesterday telling the audience in Japanese that he thought the All Blacks would "kick arse" in their test tonight against the Wallabies.

"Ashita attoteki na All Blacks shori o!" he said, using words supplied by the head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Maarten Wevers, who is fluent in the language.

"Or, we are going to kick Australia's arse from what I can see," he concluded.

The representative of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama at the forum, Tokyo MP Yoshikatsu Nakayama, agreed.

Rugby has been a recurring theme during the five-day visit of Mr Key, which ends tomorrow.

Last night, he gave an eight-minute team talk to the All Blacks, using the story of a squash player he had known as a young man.

Assistant coach Wayne Smith said Mr Key told the team the man had the talent to be a world champion but didn't quite have the belief in himself - and that was the difference between winning and not winning.

"Story telling with young men is a hell of a good way to get a point through," said Smith.

"I thought it was very clever."

Smith said the session had gone down very well, and the players had applauded the PM at the end.

"The boys were excited anyway - just the fact that a Prime Minister would come and speak to them before an event."

After the talk, Richie McCaw took the team through the captain's run at the National Stadium, where the test against the Wallabies will be played tonight. It was built for the 1964 Olympics and is where Sir Peter Snell won gold in the 800m and 1500m.

John Kirwan, the former Japan coach and All Black who was at the captain's run, believed the All Blacks would win but said it would be closer than the last time the teams met because Australia was "very, very desperate" to get a good result.

Earlier, Mr Key told the business forum that he and Dr Hatoyama had asked officials to look again at the potential for a free trade agreement, which had previously stalled because of Japan's concerns over agriculture.

Mr Key also said the Japanese Government looked certain to invest in New Zealand's so-called global alliance to fund research in cutting agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.

New Zealand is expected to host an international meeting on it next year with other likely partners, the United States, and Australia among them, to hammer out how it might work.

The global-alliance concept was announced by Mr Key during his visit to the United Nations last month.