Tokyo, Jiji Press

The Diet, Japan's parliament, stalled on Thursday following the resignation of Katsuyuki Kawai as justice minister the same day over an alleged election law violation during his wife's House of Councillors election campaign in July.

Saying that the departures of two ministers in only a month and a half after the Sept. 11 cabinet reshuffle has created a situation equivalent to a resignation of the cabinet, the opposition parties, including the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Democratic Party for the People, demanded that the budget committees of both the Upper House and the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, be convened next week for intensive talks on the scandals.

Before Kawai, Isshu Sugawara resigned as minister of economy, trade and industry only last week over a money and gift scandal.

The heads of Diet affairs from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the CDPJ and the DPFP met on and off on Thursday, but they remained apart. Talks will he held again on Friday morning.

A Lower House plenary meeting, a meeting of the chamber's Commission on the Constitution and all Upper House committee meetings scheduled for Thursday were canceled. Kawai had been slated to attend the Lower House plenary meeting, planned for debates on an amendment to the companies law. At the constitution commission meeting, open talks had been slated to take place for the first time in about two years.

During the talks among the Diet affairs chiefs, the CDPJ's Jun Azumi stressed that a full explanation by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at intensive discussions at the budget committees is a precondition for bringing the Diet back to normal.

Although the LDP's Hiroshi Moriyama called for normalizing the Diet business on Friday in exchange for agreeing to hold such intensive discussions on Nov. 11-12, the opposition side turned down the overture.

   Moriyama also proposed that intensive talks take place on Nov. 6 and 8, but to no avail, with the opposition parties refusing Diet normalization on Friday.

The ruling and opposition parties had previously agreed to hold a question-and-answer session on a bill to ratify a recently signed Japan-U.S. trade deal at a meeting of the Lower House committee on foreign affairs on Friday.

As the ruling side is hoping to hold the committee meeting as scheduled, Moriyama will meet again with opposition officials, including Azumi, before the planned start of the session.