FUKUOKA, Feb. 27 Kyodo - The Fukuoka High Court on Friday reversed an earlier lower court ruling that ordered the government to pay medical stipends to a Japanese survivor of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki for a period when he lived overseas.

Presiding Judge Takayuki Minoda said the government has no obligation to pay the stipends because the statute of limitations on claims to such stipends has run out.

The plaintiff, Masato Hirose, 73, lost his right to make the claim under the statute of limitations as more than five years had passed since August 1995 when he was still eligible, the court said.

Hirose began to receive stipends in 1973 under the Atomic Bomb Victims Relief Law. The government withheld the payment of some 330,000 yen over 10 months, from October 1994 to August 1995, when he worked as a Japanese language teacher in China.

In its March 2003 ruling last year, the Nagasaki District Court ordered the government to pay the withheld money to Hirose.

At the Fukuoka High Court, the argument focused on the statute of limitations since the government has admitted that Hirose was eligible to receive the stipends while he was abroad.

Hirose filed his suit with the Nagasaki District Court in September 2001 to help atomic bombing survivors living in South Korea get unpaid medical stipends.

Later court rulings have awarded medical stipends to Korean atomic bombing survivors seeking stipends they had been denied since leaving Japan.

The Health, Welfare and Labor Ministry now says it will provide medical stipends to atomic bombing survivors living abroad and pay unpaid stipends for the past five years. ==Kyodo