A member of the government's transport accident investigation commission leaked a draft report about the fatal 2005 Amagasaki train derailment in Hyogo Prefecture to West Japan Railway Co., government officials revealed Sept. 25.

Koichi Yamaguchi, then a member of the Aircraft and Railway Accidents Investigation Commission, handed the panel's draft report to Masao Yamazaki, then president of JR West, shortly before the panel's final report was released June 28, 2007, the commission's successor, the Japan Transport Safety Board, said.

In response to Yamazaki's repeated requests, Yamaguchi handed over the draft and also called for deleting from the report a clause disadvantageous to JR West saying the accident could have been avoided if the railway operator had installed an automatic train stopping system, or ATS.

Yamaguchi made the call at a panel session convened to compile the final report on the cause of the accident, the board said. Yamaguchi's argument was rejected, it said.