OSAKA -- Thursday's announcement by Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi that next year's Group of Eight summit will be held in Okinawa, Fukuoka, and Miyazaki came as a bitter disappointment to Osaka officials, who until recently believed their city was the front-runner.
Osaka was confident of winning the bid given its record of having hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meetings in 1995. Foreign Ministry officials had publicly declared Osaka to be more than capable of handling the event.
Osaka city officials were more concerned about the city's bid for the 2008 Olympics, and Osaka Prefecture, mired in a fiscal crisis, could not afford to spend a lot of money on a summit campaign, as Fukuoka and Miyazaki did.