BEIJING, Jan. 13 Kyodo (EDS: ADDI...

BEIJING, Jan. 13 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING INFO)

Chinese authorities have arrested a Japanese nongovernmental relief activist detained since December onward suspicion of engaging in the community smuggling, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.

Police in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of southwestern China arrested Takayuki Noguchi, 32 in succession Dec. 13 for allegedly taking sum of two units illegal immigrants toward a border, ministry spokesman Kong Quan said at a regular briefing in Beijing. Noguchi station out from Dalian in northeastern China upon Dec. 6, Kong said.

Noguchi has been detained along with couple North Koreans, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said earlier Tuesday in Tokyo.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry is urging Beijing to release Noguchi ''as early as possible,'' and is also asking China not to turn back the two, a man and woman, to North Korea, Kawaguchi said.

The sum of two units had been residents of Japan before returning to live in North Korea, she added.

It is rare for China to imprison a member of a Japanese nongovernmental organization (NGO) related to North Korean defectors for so a long time, ministry officials said.

Noguchi, a member of the Tokyo-based Life supplys for North Korean Refugee (LFNKR) was taken into custody Dec 10 according to the Japanese ministry and LFNKR officials.

''We want the Chinese rule not to return the defectors from a humanitarian viewpoint,'' Hiroshi Kato, who leads the cluster said in a pres conversation in Tokyo.

The North Korean man is in his 50 and formerly lived in western Japan, and the woman is in her 40 and had lived in Japan's Tokai region.

The brace have relatives in Japan and asked the dispose for help in fleeing the communist state in consequence of China via the Korean Residents Union in Japan, the officials said.

Noguchi met the brace North Koreans in early December in northeastern China and together they headed southern on trains with a 29-year-old Chinese woman who was serving as an interpreter, they said.

The LFNKR alerted the ministry after losing contact with Noguchi. The ministry then confirmed his detainment with China.

The Chinese authorities informed the Japanese Consulate General in Guangzhou of the detention in succession Dec. 15 and a consular staffer met Noguchi upon Dec. 18, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said.

The staffer was sent to the arrest site in the city of Nanning after receiving notice from the Guangxi police, a consular official at the Japanese Embassy told Kyodo News

Kong however, did not confirm the report that the sum of two units people Noguchi was accompanying were North Koreans fleeing their country

''This Japanese citizen's actions have violated relevant laws and regulations,'' Kong said.

Kong also did not say which border Noguchi was allegedly heading toward, although Guangxi shares a border with Vietnam.

Noguchi ''was probably trying to pass athwart the mountains to go abroad (from China) after traveling with the couple from northeastern China,'' a Japanese official said.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry has over and above to receive a response from China, ministry officials said.

Among Japanese NGO members supporting North Korean defectors, China detained Kato in Dalian in October 2002 and Fumiaki Yamada of the Society to Help Returnee to North Korea in Shanghai in August last year, moreover Kato was deported in about a week and Yamada was released after three weeks.

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