The Democratic Party of Japan proposed Tuesday extending the current Diet session by four days to Dec. 4 to accommodate pending legislation.
The opposition camp also favors an extension, but it wants the extraordinary session to run until Dec. 9. The session is currently scheduled to end next Monday.
DPJ Diet affairs chief Kenji Yamaoka made the proposal during a meeting with his counterparts from the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, lawmakers said.
Yamaoka requested that the opposition cooperate in normalizing Diet proceedings, which have ground to a halt after the ruling bloc rammed a debt repayment bill through the Lower House on Friday.
With the bill on freezing the sale of government-owned Japan Post shares high on the administration's agenda, Yamaoka may agree to hold a debate between Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and opposition leaders to break the impasse — as the opposition has demanded.
To get Diet proceedings back on track, DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa called on his opposition counterparts to hold a meeting of the secretaries general of the ruling and opposition parties, lawmakers said.
Starting in the morning, the Diet affairs chiefs of the ruling and opposition camps met several times in the Diet. They confirmed they would work to enact a law to help hepatitis patients, and on legislation setting up a fund to compensate atomic bomb survivors, participants said.
LDP Secretary General Tadamori Oshima called on the ruling coalition to give more ground, saying it has not shown enough sincerity in its request to get Diet proceedings rolling again.
"If (the ruling coalition) deeply regrets (Friday's vote on the debt repayment bill), they should respond to our proposal," he told reporters.