NAKASONE HARD-PRESSED TO SOOTHE U.S ANGER ON TRADE Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone will visit Washington next month in a bid to defuse mounting U.S. Anger over Japanese trade policies, but Western diplomats said they believed his chances of success were slim. Boxed in by powerful political pressure groups and widespread opposition to his tax reform plans, Nakasone will be hard-pressed to come up with anything new to tell U.S. President Ronald Reagan and key U.S. Congressmen, they said. News of the week-long visit starting April 29 coincided with news that Japan recorded a 8.14 billion dlr trade surplus last month, more than 70 pct higher than a year earlier. It also came one day after the Reagan Administration's Economic Policy Council decided to take retaliatory action against Japan for its alleged failure to live up to a joint trade agreement on computer microchips. Nakasone wants to go armed with two separate packages - one designed to pep up Japan's sagging economy and imports in the short-term, the other to redirect the country in the medium term away from its over-dependence on exports for growth. But government officials said political infighting could rob both packages of much of their punch and might even prevent one from seeing the light of day. Nakasone has insisted that the government would not draw up a package of short-term economic measures until after its 1987/88 budget passed parliament because he feared that would amount to a tacit admission that the budget was inadequate. But his hopes for quick passage of the budget in time for his trip have been shattered by a parliamentary boycott by opposition parties protesting over the sales tax plan. Faced with the possibility that he might have to go to the U.S. Virtually empty-handed, Nakasone today ordered his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to come up with its own measures. He can then tell Reagan the LDP package will form the basis of the government's plans, without losing face in parliament over the budget, political analysts said. Officials working on the government's short-term economic package said it would probably include interest rate cuts on loans by government corporations, deregulation, measures to pass on some of the benefits of the strong yen to consumers in the form of lower prices, and accelerated public investment. They said a record portion of state investment planned for the entire 1987/88 fiscal year will take place in the first half, probably over 80 pct. Diplomats said that was unlikely to be enough to satisfy Reagan, who is under pressure from the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress to take greater action to cut the huge American trade deficit. To complement the short-term measures, Nakasone is also likely to present Reagan with details of Japan's longer-term economic plans. A high-ranking advisory body headed by former Bank of Japan governor Haruo Maekawa is expected to come up with a final report outlining concrete steps to redirect the economy days before Nakasone is scheduled to leave for Washington. Its recommendations are designed as a follow-up to Maekawa's report last year on economic restructuring and are likely to cover such potentially politically explosive areas as agricultural reform and land policy, officials said. While wanting to make the report as explicit and detailed as possible, they said the political realities might force them to water down some of the committee's recommendations. A subcommittee is considering what the Japanese economy might look like in the medium to longer term after it undergoes massive restructuring, officials said. The subcommittee projects that the current account surplus will fall to less than two pct of Japan's total output, or gross national product, around 1993 or 1995. Last year the surplus, which measures trade in goods and services, amounted to over four pct of gnp. The subcommittee also projects annual economic growth for Japan of nearly four pct over that period and a very gradual appreciation of the yen, to about 130 to the dollar by around 1993, from 150 now.