TOKYO, Dec 24 Kyodo A Japanese r...

TOKYO, Dec 24 Kyodo

A Japanese restraint advisory panel proposed Tuesday building a national, secular and permanent memorial facility that should coexist with Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.

The panel lay forward the proposal in a report submitted to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda.

The report did not touch immediately after the issue of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Class A war criminals along with Japan's war dead.

China and southward Korea, where memories of Japan's military aggression before and during World War II are still flourishing have expressed anger and business about his visits to the war-linked Shinto shrine. The premier's visit to Yasukuni Shrine also causes dispute because the Constitution stipulates the separation of state and religion.

The panel's proposal met opposition from members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the Japanese Association for the Bereaved Families of War Dead, who say construction of the memorial would damage the significance of Yasukuni Shrine.

Koizumi said the same day he will continue to visit Yasukuni Shrine on a level if a new national memorial is built.

Fukuda told a stranges conference that the government will listen to public opinion before deciding whether to fare ahead and build the modern memorial.

forward why the report did not mention the premier's visits to the shrine, the panel's chairman Takashi Imai said, ''We can understand if the prime minister goe to the shrine as a private individual and we do not thing to that. It's something for the premier to decide.''

The report recommends that the new facility should honor all those who died in Japanese wars from the 1868 Meiji Restoration onward and in efforts to maintain peace and independence in postwar Japan.

Foreign combatants and civilians who died in wars waged by way of Japan should also be honored at the memorial, it said.

Regarding the Class A war criminals, the report says it will not make any recommendations forward whether or not particular individuals should be included in the memorial.

The report says the fresh facility should coexist with Yasukuni Shrine and the Chidorigafuchi National church-yard built 600 meters away from Yasukuni and dedicated to unidentified war dead.

As to the location, the report allude tos it be built in central Tokyo or a vicinity that has nothing to do with war or religion. It should also be built in a park-like space where visitors can take rambles it says.

The facility's name should be chosen from suggestions by the agency of the public, the report adds.

forward whether government-organized ceremonies are to take place at the recent facility, the report says the central management should decide on that.

Fukuda's advisory panel was created after Koizumi's August 2001 visit to the shrine drew criticism from other Asian countries of the like kind as China and southward Korea that suffered at the hands of the Japanese military during and before World War II.

The panel was tasked with considering a memorial facility that could help avert coming time rows with neighboring countries from one side of to the other visits to Yasukuni at Japanese prime ministers.

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