Prime Minister Stephen Harper has moved to resolve a dispute that threatens to shut down an investigation into the 1985 Air India attack.

Harper was responding to earlier comments by former Supreme Court Justice John Major, the head of the Air-India inquiry. Major said he may have to shut down proceedings because the government's claims to secrecy are making it too difficult for him to do his job.

"I have instructed my national security adviser to meet with people in the various departments to impose a non-restrictive interpretation of the law, and to expedite resolution of this dispute as quickly as possible," Harper said Monday in the House of Commons.

Major told an inquiry that he will give lawyers two weeks to reassess their claims that national security would be endangered by fuller disclosure of documents and public hearings on many issues.

"If the documents remain, in a manner of speaking blacked out, there is no way I can carry out my mandate," said Major, ordering a halt to the public investigation into the bombing that took 329 lives.  

The judge said he will adjourn the hearings until at least March 5, saying he hopes the government will come around to share his view by that date.

"A serious problem has arisen,'' Major told the inquiry." If the proceedings started today, under the circumstances, the redaction of the documents -- that's the censoring or black-lining of the documents -- would make them meaningless.''

Major said this would mean witnesses could not be questioned properly in public.

The documents number in the thousands, said Major, and court proceedings to declassify them could take years.

If that happened, he warned that the inquiry would "disappear into the quicksand of bureaucracy."

Federal lawyer Barney Brucker said he hopes a solution can be found. But he said some material must be kept secret to avoid giving terrorists a road map on how to beat security measures.

Lawyers for the victims' families said they're disappointed and disillusioned at the government's overly secretive stance.

Major was appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper last year to look into the 1985 bombing, to find out what went wrong with the subsequent investigation, and draw lessons for current counter-terrorist policy.

With a report from The Canadian Press