The Diet opened Friday for an extraordinary session that will run for eight days until Aug. 6, as decided by the ruling bloc.

The opposition camp had wanted the first session since the July 11 Upper House election to run for more than a month to allow for deliberations on the contentious pension reforms, deployment of ground troops to Iraq and the political fund scandal involving the largest faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, but the LDP-New Komeito coalition vetoed this.

The ruling alliance also turned down an opposition demand for televised Budget Committee sessions.