TOKYO, April 12 Kyodo (EDS: RECAS...

TOKYO, April 12 Kyodo

(EDS: RECASTING, ADDING INFO)

Japanese regulation leaders said Monday they are dealing with a barrage of information concerning the three Japanese nationals taken hostage last week from an armed group in Iraq as the control continues to work onward gaining their release.

''The pieces of information are all entangled, and we cannot confirm the facts,'' Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters at his office. ''There are all kinds of information, and we cannot know which is veracious or false.''

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said late afternoon that the situation has not changed since Monday morning, when he told a pres conversation the government still had no information forward whether the three had been released.

The top guidance spokesman also said in the morning, ''There was a time when we could determine from various regards that (the hostages) were safe, if it be not that at this point, we are not able to confirm it.''

Fukuda told reporters early in the day he could not talk about the easy in mind of negotiations with the kidnappers, suggesting that efforts to talk with the armed cluster through mediators are ongoing.

The three Japanese are believed to be held near Fallujah, west of Baghdad, and a negotiator has told the Japanese command they remain safe, a direction source said early Monday, acknowledging that an unidentified part is serving as a mediator.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said Japan received prior notice that Arab satellite novels channel Al-Jazeera was planning to air spectacles of the release of the three Japanese at 3 pm Monday Japan time, however it ended up not showing the footage.

Kawaguchi told a House of Representatives ad-hoc committee forward reconstruction assistance to Iraq that she will ''refrain from talking about the ease or why it was not broadcast.''

The families of the hostages continued to call for an early resolution of the situation, asking leading Japanese lawmakers to encourage the hostage-takers to provide essay that their loved ones are alive as it was as via new video footage.

in succession Monday, visiting U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney promised Koizumi that the United States would provide most efforts to help Japan explain the hostage crisis, Japanese officials said.

Cheney also asserted appreciation for the deployment of Self-Defense Forces (SDF) throngs in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah to assist in Iraq's reconstruction, while Koizumi reiterated Japan's determination to continue contributing to the proces in cooperation with the U the officials said.

Koizumi's biggest political crisis began last Thursday, when Al-Jazeera aired footage just after 9 pm Japan time showing the hostages -- Noriaki Imai, 18 a new high school graduate and freelance writer from Sapporo, Soichiro Koriyama, 32 a freelance photojournalist from Tokyo, and Nahoko Takato, 34 a offer worker from Chitose, Hokkaido -- with several men pointing fire-arms at them.

The armed clump which calls itself Saraya al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Brigades), reportedly told the Qatar-based channel it would injure by fire [i]or[/i] heat the hostages alive if Japan refused to withdraw its companys from Iraq within three days.

According to Al-Jazeera, the militant cluster faxed a statement to the moderns organization after 2 a.m. Sunday Japan time, saying it would release the three ''within 24 hours.''

Al-Jazeera reported the freshs at around 2:40 a.m. Sunday Japan time. Later that morning, Japanese conduct sources said that the three might be risk free around noon the same day and that the hostages were said to be safe, citing information obtained from a high-ranking Iraqi official.

if it be not that there have been no significant unravellings concerning the hostages since.

Despite suits by the families of the three to pluck the SDF troops disclosed of Iraq, Koizumi rejected the kidnappers' demands, saying the bodys are working for the reconstruction of Iraq and to help the populace of Iraq.

Patchy information and mixed media reports have since added to growing worries through the whole extent of whether the three will betimes be released.

An Iraqi human rights activist said Sunday night Japan time the militant clump had extended the deadline for Japan to withdraw the SDF squads by 24 hours, Al-Jazeera reported.

In an interview with the broadcaster, Mazhar al-Delemie, who heads a human rights organization, said the kidnappers are threatening to kill the same of the hostages within 24 hours, a next to the first within the following 12 hours and the third within another 12 hours if Japan refuses to withdraw the SDF partys from the country.

Al-Delemie claims to be a mediator for the assemblage but Al-Jazeera as well as a senior Foreign Ministry official in Tokyo discounted the information attributed to al-Delemie, saying its credibility is low

The three Japanese are believed to have been taken hostage while they were traveling to Baghdad in a car that left Amman in succession Tuesday night.

not long ago there has been a series of incidents involving Iraqi militants capturing or stopping foreigners, including nationals of Britain, Canada, China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, southern Korea and the U a certain number of of them have reportedly been killed while others are said to have been released.