Members of a disbanded advisory panel to the former environment minister is urging the government to map out relief and compensation measures for people with Minamata disease without sticking to conventional policies.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>'I hope the government will deal with the Minamata issue from the viewpoint that they themselves or their families are –

, while keeping a cool head as administrators," Kunio Yanagida, a nonfiction writer, told a public meeting Saturday in Tokyo.

Yanagida was on the nine-member advisory panel to former Environment Minister Yuriko Koike that proposed in September that the government develop a new relief framework to help people who have not been officially recognized as patients under the current standards.

Koike asked the panel to study the Minamata issue on May 1, the 50th anniversary of the disease's official recognition. The disease, which actually broke out in the city of Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, long before it was official recognized, was caused by years of discharge of mercury into Minamata Bay by Chisso Corp.

Yanagida, given his experience as a journalist covering major accidents and disasters, reiterated the panel's proposal that the government establish a permanent organization to investigate the causes and background in cases in which fatal incidents occur and compile relief measures for victims.