TOKYO -- A top Japanese ruling party official suggested on Sunday that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi might reshuffle his cabinet in September despite his abhorrence of Tokyo's traditional rotating-door personnel ritual.

Koizumi has kept his cabinet members largely intact, except for the sacking of a popular but controversial foreign minister in February. But he has faced constant pressure from the ruling coalition to give some veteran lawmakers a chance.

While he has largely ignored such voices to date, political analysts say his declining public support ratings and the need to garner more party support to push legislation through Parliament may be forcing him to rethink.

"Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is seriously contemplating whom he should call upon to deal with political developments going ahead," Taku Yamasaki, secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), said in a Fuji television program.

"I don't think he has come to any conclusion yet as it's in September." It was not clear if Yamasaki was referring to a consensus among pundits that September was the likely timing for a reshuffle, or whether Koizumi had said he would act in that month.

Speculation of a September move has been based on the fact that the terms of senior office bearers within the LDP expire at the end of that month.

Yamasaki said a reshuffle could not take place immediately after the current parliamentary session ends on July 31.

Koizumi told reporters last Thursday during a Group of Eight summit in Canada that he might consider personnel changes after the Parliament adjourns.

Cabinet reshuffling has been almost an annual ritual in Japan, where even prime ministers have changed almost on an annual basis over the last decade and a half.

Koizumi did not budge on calls to sack Agricultural Minister Tsutomu Takebe over his ministry's clumsy handling of the mad cow disease outbreak, or that for Defense Minister Gen Nakatani over his staff's mishandling of information on human rights activists.

He did, however, fire his outspoken foreign minister, Makiko Tanaka, in February -- a move which led to a near halving of his public approval ratings from dizzying heights above 70 percent, Reuters said. The LDP's Yamasaki also did not rule out the possibility that Koizumi might dissolve the House of Representatives and hold a general election, saying the prime minister had a tendency to make "unexpected decisions suddenly."