''We cannot proceed unless we first find out how many survivors live in each country. This assistance program is just the beginning. I'd like to call on you to support it,'' Sakaguchi said after a ceremony commemorating the 57th anniversary of U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

The survivors' groups have criticized the government's plan to provide aid to A-bomb survivors living overseas to receive medical treatment in Japan under the Atomic Bomb Victims Relief Law. They have called the program too restrictive in scope and application.

The groups have also called for altering the standards used to certify A-bomb survivors, saying they are ''mechanical and unsuited to the realities.''

''I understand the survivors' feelings, but the certifying process must be scientific and objective,'' Sakaguchi, minister of health, labor and welfare, said. ''We aren't making the process especially rigid.''

Commenting on efforts to help second-generation survivors, who are excluded from receiving aid under the relief law, Sakaguchi said only that he will continue to offer health checkups for them.

The checkups are meant to ''study the causal relationship between illnesses arising from aging and the effects of radiation,'' he said.

An estimated 5,000 atomic bomb survivors live abroad without any relief, with an estimated 2,200 in South Korea, 900 in North Korea, 1,000 in the United States and 180 in South America, according to the health ministry.

The ministry began a new relief program for overseas A-bomb survivors in June under which it shoulders their travel expenses for visits to Japan for medical treatment.

It has come in for criticism, however, partly because the program requires the survivors, many at advanced age, to make a long distance journey overseas.