A nonpartisan group of 233 conservative lawmakers adopted a resolution Tuesday against establishing a secular memorial for the war dead.

The Diet Members' Committee of Japan Conference, headed by Takeo Hiranuma, a former trade minister, also expressed support for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which honors 14 Class-A war criminals along with 2.46 million war dead.

The group strongly protested Seoul's recent request that Japan allocate funds in the fiscal 2006 budget to study the feasibility of building a secular memorial, calling it "interference in internal affairs."

"Should the government make moves to allocate the research funds, we will act to prevent it," said Eriko Yamatani, a Liberal Democratic Party member of the House of Councilors and one of 119 junior LDP lawmakers supporting Koizumi's Yasukuni visits.

The resolution follows the founding of a panel by senior lawmakers from the ruling coalition of the LDP and the New Komeito as well as the opposition Democratic Party of Japan to study the feasibility of establishing a new war memorial.

The panel aims to bridge the rifts between Japan and its neighbors, which consider Yasukuni a symbol of Japan's militarism and wartime aggression in Asia.

"Some countries like China and South Korea have repeatedly criticized the prime minister's visits to Yasukuni Shrine and some domestic opinions are in favor of building a new national memorial and removing the names of the Class-A war criminals" from Yasukuni, the resolution says. "But the government and the Diet have not considered the Class-A war criminals as criminals in terms of the civil law since the war."