Hiromasa Yonekura, chairman of the Nippon Keidanren business leaders' body, told AFP in Paris that the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the plant and caused a major nuclear disaster could not have been predicted.

And he slammed the Japanese government for criticising Tepco's response, alleging that the state was trying to shift blame onto the firm and refusing to shoulder its own responsibility towards the victims of the crisis.

"They are getting away from taking any kind of responsibility. Avoiding it," he said, in an interview during a working visit to Europe. "So I am openly criticising the government in respect of compensation.

"And those Tepco people, who are really working hard, have also lost their families and homes and they are working just in front, exposing themselves to higher level radiation," he declared.

Power giant Tepco has begun to pay compensation to people driven from their homes by the plant's meltdown, which was triggered when a vast tsunami wave smashed the cooling system and caused reactors to overheat.

But Yonekura argued that, in the case of such an exceptional disaster, it was legally the government's responsibility to take charge.

"Tepco built this plant on the basis of a safety standard which was set by the government and they have been operating in accordance with Japanese regulations," he said.

Yonekura argued that Japan's Nuclear Power Generation Compensation Law has a proviso exempting reactor operators from responsibility in the event of "a disaster which cannot be usually imagined."

When the law passed, the then head of Japan's science and technology agency, future prime minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, told lawmakers an "unusual disaster" would be one roughly three times worse than the 1923 Kanto earthquake.

Yonekura claimed the March 11 quake plus tsunami was orders of magnitude greater than the earlier disaster.

He said the government's response had undermined global public support for nuclear power, and dismissed the idea that Tepco might have to be nationalised if it is not to collapse under the weight of compensation claims.

"No, no, no," he said. "There's a stupid, ignorant minister once mentioned that there is a possibility of nationalising Tepco, which cannot be done.

"They are responsible. The government is responsible for continuing to help Tepco and also to compensate those residents, and they always said Tepco is responsible for this compensation, it is not true, under the law."

Japan's parliament passed an emergency 4 trillion yen ($49 billion) budget to help fund earthquake reconstruction on Monday, but Yonekura said this was not enough and would have to be increased in June.

To fund the package, he suggested a temporary increase in Japan's sales tax -- which currently stands at five percent and which he said his group would in any case like to see at least doubled to restrict Japan's budget deficit.

"Our business organisation advocates for an increase of the consumption tax, similar to VAT here. Our current level is only five percent. We say we need to increase it to more than 10 percent, gradually," he said.

But Yonekura said funds raised by doubling VAT should only be applied to the "rising costs of the social security system" and that a second and separate but temporary boost to sales tax should cover earthquake relief.

"Because this is a really large scale disaster which cannot be imagined," he explained. Yonekura was in Paris as part of a tour that has seen him meet European business leaders and senior French officials.

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