Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is expected to announce the target as early as June, the Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun newspapers said.

For the year to March 2007, Japan's total volume of greenhouse gas emissions was estimated at 1,341 million tons, up 6.4 percent from the 1990 level, used as the base year for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Tokyo is still discussing details of the plan ahead of Japan hosting the Group of Eight summit in July, the Asahi said.

Japanese officials want to make the goal not legally binding, but they hope the announcement will encourage technological and business innovations in the environment field, the newspaper added.

The government is also expected to announce plans to establish a carbon credit exchange where domestic companies can trade emissions rights, the Nikkei business daily said, citing unnamed government sources.

Japan had joined the United States in saying it was too early to set numbers for future emission cuts.

However, Tokyo, under serious criticism from environmentalists, said earlier this year that it would set its own national target for reductions after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.

The European Union has proposed global emission cuts of 25 to 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels in a bid to stem global warming, which UN scientists warn could put millions of people at risk by the end of the century.

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