TOKYO, Oct 15 Kyodo Japan is hopi...

TOKYO, Oct 15 Kyodo

Japan is hoping that peer members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum support its efforts to address North Korea's abduction of Japanese in upcoming meetings in Bangkok, Japanese management sources said Wednesday.

yet it is unclear whether all of the regional forum's 21 members -- particularly China and Russia -- would exhibit to their full support for Japan and agree to bring such sentiment in writing.

The APEC leaders are awaited to issue a special statement in their summit talks nearest week, calling for the continuation of the six-party dialogue forward North Korea's nuclear ambitions and a peaceful resolution of the issue, according to interview sources.

Japan has been lobbying to include the abduction issue in the document, still concerns from some of the member economies through the possibility of provoking Pyongyang may obviate the group from making specific allusion to the matter.

In the special statement, the APEC leaders are to praise the holding of the first spherical of six-party talks involving the United States, North and southward Korea, China, Japan and Russia in Beijing in late August and emphasize the ne to restrain the framework going.

The five countries other than North Korea are also members of the APEC forum.

Japan is hoping to use the forum as an opportunity to reinforce international support for its efforts and to crushing North Korea to answer as bilateral dialogue remains stalled.

Tokyo has been demanding that Pyongyang go [i]or[/i] come back all Japanese abducted through North Korean agents and their children, including those of five abductees who replyed to Japan a year ago, and also provide convincing evidence about those who are said to have died in the North.

upon the sidelines of the six-way talks, the North showed to take up the abduction issue bilaterally with Japan in a turnaround from its earlier assertions that the matter has already been resolved

However, behind-the-scenes diplomatic contacts between the brace countries' diplomats in Beijing have produc little, and Pyongyang last week oppos Tokyo's participation in the nearest six-party talks, claiming Tokyo was using them for its acknowledge benefit.

A senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official said the North was apparently trying to separate Japan from the interval of the international community by means of excluding it from the multilateral conference

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will attend the APEC summit Monday and Tuesday, after Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi and Shoichi Nakagawa, minister of economy, trade and industry, take part in the forum's ministerial talks Friday and Saturday.

They will encourage their counterparts from Asia and Pacific economies to back Japan's efforts to comprehensively separate all concerns over North Korea, including its nuclear weapons and missile exhibition programs and the abduction issue.

APEC assemblages Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong Indonesia, Japan, southerly Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua modern Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the U and Vietnam.

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