The ruling coalition will accelerate work on measures to revive share prices, compiling them by tonight, the top policy maker of the Liberal Democratic Party said Thursday.

"We will report draft measures to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori (today)," Shizuka Kamei, chairman of the LDP Policy Affairs Research Council, told the day's Diet committee session. "After receiving the prime minister's instructions, we would like to complete the measures by the end of this week even if we have to work through the night."

Kamei made the remarks as the key Nikkei average on the Tokyo Stock Exchange threatened to drop below its post-bubble nadir of 12,879.97, touched on Oct. 9, 1998.

The gauge sank below 13,000 early Thursday afternoon for the first time since October 1998, although it closed at 13,138.23. The plunge came after the government announced the gross domestic product shrank a revised 0.6 percent in the July-September period of 2000.

The coalition parties are seeking to reconcile differences over the market-priming measures in view of policy proposals submitted the previous day by the LDP to a meeting of the three.

The measures include proposals to remove a legal limit on treasury stock -- outstanding shares reacquired by the issuer -- and to postpone for a year the planned March 31 expiry of the banks' legal privilege to count latent gains on their land holdings as part of their net worths.

The coalition allies have so far remained at odds over when the curb on treasury stock should be removed.

Meanwhile, Kosei Ueno, deputy chief Cabinet secretary, reckoned that the government is not trying to take short-term steps to counter the drop in stock prices but is working to fix market infrastructure.

"The government is not thinking of doing anything special," he said. "But both the Liberal Democratic Party and the opposition bloc are considering steps to revitalize the market, so we will deal appropriately with ways to fix the market infrastructure based on them."