Under fire for the slow pace of justice and inadequate clean-up of the site of the disaster, the world's worst industrial accident, the government created a panel of senior ministers to draw up recommendations for fresh action.

The panel, whose advice will now be handed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has recommended renewing efforts to secure the extradition of the former chief executive of Union Carbide, which owned the plant at the centre of the case.

The disaster unfolded on the night of December 2, 1984, when the pesticide plant in Bhopal, the capital of central Madhya Pradesh state, spewed 40 tonnes of toxic gas into surrounding residential areas.

The gas killed thousands instantly and tens of thousands more from its lingering effects over the following years.

"India will make vigorous efforts to get Warren Anderson repatriated," Minister for Urban Development Jaipal Reddy told AFP after the panel finalised its work.

Anderson was arrested in India after the accident, but he then fled the country. Repeated requests for his extradition have been turned down by US authorities and few now expect Washington to assent.

The now retired Anderson, like the local managers of Union Carbide's subsidiary in India, faces charges of criminal negligence. Seven of the local managers were convicted on June 7, while Anderson was named as an absconder.

Amid anger in India about the perceived leniency of the sentences given to the Indian managers -- two years in prison pending appeal -- Anderson has become a target and a lightning rod for a general feeling of injustice.

The ministers also recommended that the federal government help with the clean-up of the site in Bhopal and that compensation for victims be doubled, Reddy said.

"We have decided on a compensation of 10 lakh (one million rupees, 22,000 dollars) for each of the dead, minus the amount already received," Reddy said.

The ministerial group has also recommended the setting up of a federal medical research facility in Bhopal to monitor the health conditions of survivors and children born to them, Reddy said.

Other members of the panel included Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Health Minister Gulam Nabi Azad, Law Minister Veerappa Moily and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh.

The government's critics have suggested the panel is a modest bureaucratic response to public fury over the case and that little will change as a consequence.

India pressing the US for Anderson's extradition has the potential to strain relations between New Delhi and Washington, however.

Robert Blake, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, told reporters earlier this month that he didn't "expect this verdict to reopen any new inquiries or anything like that."

Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide in 1999 and says all liabilities related to the accident were cleared in a 470-million-dollar settlement reached out of court with India's government in 1989.

Government figures put the death tollfrom the accident at 3,500 within three days of the leak, but the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research puts the figure at between 8,000 and 10,000 in the same period.

The ICMR has said that up to 1994, 25,000 people also died from the consequences of gas exposure, and victims' groups say many are still suffering the effects today.

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