TOKYO : Japan will look again at the facts behind its wartime use of sex slaves, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Thursday, the first step towards a potential revision of a landmark apology.

Conservative lawmakers have demanded that Japan water down its statement of apology to thousands of so-called "comfort women," a move that would be certain to infuriate other Asian countries.

Abe - speaking, coincidentally, on International Women's Day - said he stood by the 1993 apology but would let his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) launch a new investigation.

"Our basic position is to follow the statement," Abe told reporters.

But he added: "As the party said it would conduct research and investigations, the government for its part intends to cooperate with the party if and when necessary by providing reference materials and others.

"There is no reason for us to refuse requests for reference materials."

In 1993, Japan's top government spokesman issued a statement voicing "sincere apologies and remorse" and acknowledging that Japan's imperial army was involved "directly or indirectly" in sexual slavery.

Abe, known for his conservative views on history, angered China and South Korea last week when he said that comfort women were not forced by the military into sexual slavery "in the strict sense of coercion."

More than a dozen lawmakers met on Thursday and proposed to tone down the 1993 statement.

Former education minister Nariaki Nakayama, who chaired the meeting, said that Japan needed to counter rising criticism overseas that was "based on a misunderstanding."

"If the outcome of the reinvestigation conforms to the statement, there is no need for reconsideration. But if it does not, we want a correction as a matter of course," Nakayama told reporters after the meeting.

Historians say up to 200,000 young women, mostly from Korea but also from China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan, were forced to serve as sex slaves in Japanese army brothels.

The conservative LDP lawmakers argued that China and the two Koreas are using the comfort women issue for political ends.

"According to our survey, there was some coercion by some private parties but not by the government," a statement from the conservative lawmakers said.

The group plans to collect signatures from LDP lawmakers and submit them to Abe, Nakayama said.

The group called on the US Congress to reject a bill that demands an apology from Japan and outright recognition of its involvement.

The Japanese government has been lobbying against the bill, which is seen as more likely to pass since Democrats took control of Congress from President George W. Bush's Republicans in January.

"It is not useful for Japan and the United States to adopt a resolution that is not based on facts," Japanese Ambassador to the United States Ryozo Kato told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.

In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki - one of whose predecessors issued the 1993 apology - complained about foreign media coverage.

He pointed to an editorial in The New York Times, which said that Japan's 1993 statement "needs to be expanded upon, not whittled down."

"We are considering taking appropriate steps, including the publication of counter-arguments, against reports abroad which were based not on facts but on false interpretations," Shiozaki said. - AFP/de