A fund to compensate women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for the military during the war will be abolished in 2007, former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama said Monday.

Murayama is president of the Asian Women's Fund fund, set up in 1995 -- 50 years after the war ended -- in line with a government decision to offer a gesture of atonement on behalf of the Japanese people to the former sex slaves, known euphemistically as "comfort women."

The fund, technically a government-approved foundation based in Tokyo, will complete its compensation programs in March 2007 in the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Indonesia, Murayama told a news conference.

"We think we were able to fulfill our duty regarding the comfort woman issue," Murayama said.

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masaaki Yamazaki, meanwhile, separately told reporters that the government believes the fund was able to generate steady results.

The fund has collected a total of about 565 million yen in donations. But some of the women have refused to accept money from the fund because it is based on donations and is not official compensation from the Japanese government. They said the government should offer official compensation and an official apology.

Yamazaki played down such refusals, saying, "Women who received the money expressed gratitude to us."

He said the foundation will continue to collect data and information on the issue even after its dissolution.