A committee comprised of representatives from the government and the three ruling parties examining the construction of new bullet train networks decided Monday to pare the project's budget for three years beginning in fiscal 1998.

The three years have been designated as an intensive period of fiscal reform. The committee has been studying three proposed sections of the Tohoku, Kyushu and Hokuriku lines to prioritize the start of the construction.

The committee members left details, including the amount of budget cuts and the sections to be affected, for future discussions. At the same time, they decided to proceed with the construction of sections for which basic conditions such as profitability and consent from local governments have been met.

In the budget proposal for fiscal 1998 revealed in August, the Transport Ministry requested 34 billion yen for the construction of new bullet train networks. The three sections are between Hachinohe and Shin Aomori on the Tohoku Line, between Nagano and Joetsu on the Hokuriku Line and between Funakoya and Shin Yatsushiro on the Kyushu Line.

Last month, Finance Minister Hiroshi Mitsuzuka, a member of the committee, proposed to freeze construction for three years as part of an effort to repay 28 trillion yen in debt left by the former Japanese National Railways.

During Monday's meeting, Mitsuzuka took the proposal off the table by saying that a public consensus on how to restrain the projects should be obtained in the process of establishing a budget for fiscal 1998 later this month.

Mitsuzuka is also a committee member of the prime minister's Conference on Fiscal Structural Reform, which has been discussing ways to cope with the huge debt.