1.   Although it rarely happens, one call from a senior ministry bureaucrat can frighten off customers and tie a bank up in knots.

2.   At the time, retired ministry bureaucrats were running many of these companies.

3.   Chatumongkol was a finance ministry bureaucrat with a reputation for confrontation.

4.   Frustration over her behavior reached a high point late last week when foreign ministry bureaucrats openly ridiculed her and she faced a grilling from opposition politicians in parliament.

5.   Koyama was arrested in November on suspicion of bribing another former health ministry bureaucrat with the intention of receiving favors and subsidies.

6.   Politicians, though, are more worried than ministry bureaucrats, partly because members of the upper house of Parliament face election this summer.

7.   Relations between Tanaka and Fukuda are frigid, with Fukuda considered an ally of beleaguered ministry bureaucrats.

8.   Secondly, there is no guarantee that the ministry bureaucrats will be kept from meddling in the running of this body.

9.   So far the Cabinet ministers have volunteered little more than a bullet point list of deregulation goals written by ministry bureaucrats.

10.   Time was running short, he said, and if the ministry bureaucrats were not brought under control, the sanctions would go into effect.