A panel of outside experts advising the Foreign Ministry held its first meeting Wednesday morning to review ministerial operations and discuss ways of preventing further misuses of public funds.

The six-member panel, formed in the wake of an embezzlement scandal involving a former ministry official, selected Akira Saito, president of the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, as the chair and University of Tokyo professor Akihiko Tanaka as deputy chair.

It has scheduled meetings to be held on 10 consecutive Wednesdays and will submit its recommendations within three months.

Foreign Minister Yohei Kono told the group at the start of the meeting at the ministry's Iikura guesthouse that the ministry "must regain the trust of Japanese people" in the aftermath of the embezzlement scandal.

"I ask for your opinions on how we can develop a system to prevent this type of incident from recurring," Kono said.

The panel is set to review the accounting, personnel, organizational structure and auditing system of the ministry. It will also invite opinions from other outside experts.

The panel, however, will not review how discretionary funds from the Cabinet Secretariat are dispensed, Saito said.

Katsutoshi Matsuo, a former official in charge of supporting overseas visits by Japanese VIPs, allegedly embezzled at least 54 million yen from public funds he received from the secretariat to pay for VIPs' travel expenses.

Saito said the central problem is not the handling of money at the secretariat itself but the involvement of a Foreign Ministry official in using public funds and the system that allowed it to happen.

Wednesday's discussion focused on why the ministry was unaware of Matsuo's use of a personal credit card to pay travel expenses and why there was no record of change in the payment system when Matsuo took control, Saito said.

Matsuo reportedly pooled public funds in his personal bank accounts and paid expenses with his credit cards from those accounts. The embezzlement is believed to have occurred under this system. Payments were previously made in cash or by remittance.

Other panel members include Eiichi Kakei, a lawyer and former prosecutor general; Gaishi Hiraiwa, honorary chairman of the Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren); Sumiko Iwao, a professor at Musashi Institute of Technology; and Masaji Shinagawa, an adviser to Nippon Fire & Marine Insurance Co. Writer Ayako Sono will contribute periodically.

A senior ministry official said the ministry intends to follow through on all the recommendations made by the panel regardless of their difficulty.

Halt to 'secret funds'

Takenori Kanzaki, leader of New Komeito, said Wednesday that his party and its two ruling coalition partners will discuss halting the use of a portion of diplomatic secret funds toward the end of Diet deliberations on the fiscal 2001 budget.

Kanzaki made the statement at a news conference.

Officially called "compensation expenses," the clandestine funds set aside to finance classified government activities are at the center of a recent embezzlement scandal involving a diplomat.