Analysis - Japan PM to push security agenda next year with fresh urgency

TOKYO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will likely push with fresh urgency next year a bid to ease legal limits on the Japanese military's ability to fight shoulder to shoulder with allies overseas, a goal that eluded him in his first troubled term.

Lifting Japan's self-imposed ban on exercising the right of collective self-defence would mark a major turning point for Japan's post-war security policy and could increase tensions in the region, where a row over tiny uninhabited islands in the East China Sea encapsulates growing Sino-Japanese mistrust.