Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi dismissed Wednesday growing calls from the opposition camp for Kosuke Hori, chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, to be sacked for his responsibility for the Niigata police sandal.

During the weekly one-on-one debate session with the leaders of opposition parties, Obuchi said that Hori, also the home affairs minister, should stay on to "fulfill his duty" by improving the functioning of the commission and regaining public trust in the nation's police organization.

"I don't think dismissing the chairman will solve everything," Obuchi said.

The prime minister was replying to a question from Yukio Hatoyama, head of the Democratic Party of Japan, who urged the prime minister to fire Hori.

Earlier in the 40-minute "question time" session, Obuchi was met with a barrage of jeering from the opposition when he said, "In vulgar words, (they) may have been just out of luck," referring to the two top police officials who kept drinking and playing mah-jongg at a spa in Niigata even after learning that a missing girl held captive for nearly a decade had been stumbled upon by health officials.

Obuchi later insisted that he meant to say "the issue is so grave that we cannot dismiss it simply as their bad luck."

"The prime minister himself revealed that such police behavior is nothing out of the ordinary," Hatoyama told reporters after the debate, adding that Obuchi still does not seem to understand the seriousness of the incident.

Hori came under fire as the commission failed to strongly punish the two police officials.

The opposition bloc has intensified its attacks on Hori and the prime minister, especially after learning that the commission did not, in fact, hold a meeting when it approved the National Police Agency-proposed punishments for the officials on February 25. On Monday, Hori revised his earlier statement to the Diet and admitted that commission members separately signed a document approving the decision.

Hori, a Liberal Democratic Party member, later told a Lower House committee that as long as the prime minister wishes him to stay in office, he considers it his responsibility to perform his duty.

The NPSC, which consists of six members including the chairman, is the body that supervises the NPA.

After the weekly debate, Obuchi told reporters that the government would review the whole NPSC system as well as its relationship with the Cabinet.

"I think it's time to seriously consider (reviewing) the system itself," he said. "Otherwise, we may not be able to secure full-scale (public) trust in police, I'm afraid."