TOKYO, Aug 21 (AFP) - A Japanese high court Wednesday reduced prison terms for two former presidents of a drug maker whose HIV-contaminated blood products infected hundreds of people, mainly haemophiliacs, in the 1980s.

The Osaka High Court in western Japan rejected an appeal to have the jail terms handed by the lower-court to Renzo Matsushita, 81, and Tadakazu Suyama, 74, for professional negligence resulting in death, commuted to suspended sentences.

Presiding judge Ken Toyota noted the appellants "cannot be excused from considerable blame ... as they neglected their duty to stop selling unheated products and recall them."

But he shortened the prison term for Matsushita to one year and six months from the two years to which he was sentenced by the district court in February 2000. The term for Suyama was cut by four months to one year and two months.

They deserved lighter sentences due to the absence of appropriate instructions from the health ministry and their "deep regret," the judge said, noting that they had visited bereaved families and apologised.

The two men were presidents of Green Cross Corp., now Mitsubishi Pharma Corp. after mergers. Matsushita was a health ministry bureaucrat before serving at Green Cross.

They were convicted on a specimen charge after a man with liver disease who used Green Cross blood products contracted HIV in 1986. He died of AIDS in December 1995, aged 47.

His widow, whose name was withheld, said she was "relieved to see the sentences were not suspended although they are light," according to Jiji Press news agency.

"They visited me to apologise but I did not find it sincere," she told reporters, fighting back tears, Jiji said.

The accused had called for leniency, arguing blood-clotting agents were indispensable for the treatment of haemophiliacs but the stable supply of heated products could not be guaranteed in early 1986.

They also insisted there was no definite awareness in 1985 that unheated products were dangerous and the health ministry had not ordered the company to recall them.

The use of unheated blood-clotting agents caused a total of 1,431 people, mostly haemophiliacs, to be infected with the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV), which can lead to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)

Of them, 536 people had died by the end of May 2001, according to the health ministry's latest survey.

The scandal erupted in 1989 when patients sued the government and drug companies including Green Cross, which used to be Japan's top supplier of blood products.

Last year, the former head of the health and welfare ministry's AIDS study group set up in 1983 was found not guilty of professional negligence in a ruling that upset victims and their relatives.

The Tokyo District Court in March 2001 noted Takeshi Abe, who used to be the nation's leading authority on haemophilia, should have known in 1985 that the use of unheated blood products carried a risk of transmitting HIV.

But it handed out a not-guilty verdict, saying that at the time, a majority of Japanese haemophiliac specialists were still using unheated blood products.

Abe, now 86, was charged with allowing an unnamed haemophiliac patient to be administered untreated blood coagulants in May and June 1985. The patient subsequently developed full-blown AIDS and died in 1991.

The case is currently before the Tokyo High Court as prosecutors have appealed.

The Tokyo court also handed down a suspended term to a former high-ranking health ministry official last September. Both the accused and prosecution have appealed.

mis/ja/mp Nampa-AFP WEB story ENDS (NAMPA 210755)