Hanover, Germany - A former Japanese premier, Shinzo Abe, is to jointly open this month's Hanover Fair in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel, marking Japan's status this year at the heavy-industry expo as "partner nation," officials said Friday.

Germany vainly hoped current Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda would make the trip. Abe has been appointed special envoy for the task.

The five-day event will be kicked off with the opening ceremony in the northern city of Hanover on the evening of April 20.

Highlights of the fair, one of the world's biggest machinery expos, are to include robots and energy-saving ideas from Japan.

Tomoharu Washio, deputy chief of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), said in Hanover Friday that Japanese business people were expecting new contacts and closer ties to Germany, with the two countries having much in common.

Sepp Heckmann, chief executive of the April 21-25 fair, said Friday that energy cuts, fighting global warming and smart technology would be key themes of the overall event, with corporate inventions offering some answers to these global issues.

Industry experts believed there was "immense" potential for industry to save energy, but not with traditional technologies.

He said the three big trends in the sector were miniaturization, the greater use of intelligent devices and the focus on energy efficiency, not just to save power but also to raise productivity.

The 5,100 companies exhibiting at the heavy-industry fair will include 150 from Japan.

Merkel visited Japan last year and personally urged Japanese companies to attend the event, which has sections devoted to energy- saving, automation, pipelines and other industrial technologies.

Among Japanese exhibitors will be Nippon Oil Corp, demonstrating what it claims is the world's first natural-gas-driven fuel-cell system for homes.

Toyota Motor Corp is to show a hybrid vehicle employing a fuel- cell engine.

Tokushima prefecture is to promote its "LED Valley," a projected site for research and manufacture of the light emitting diode (LED). The world's leading LED company, Nichia, has set up in Tokushima along with 37 other LED companies.

Robots will show their paces too at the fair. Japan is the world's biggest robot exporter and its industry was employing 356,500 robots as of the end of 2004, almost three times as many as the 122,000 in the United States. (dpa)