DUBAI, April 16 Kyodo (EDS: UPDAT...

DUBAI, April 16 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING INFO)

The three Japanese released by the agency of their captors Thursday in Iraq arrived in Dubai in succession Friday on a chartered plane from Baghdad and are calculate uponed to meet their relatives from Japan in the United Arab Emirates city.

further Japanese officials had no freshs of the whereabouts of sum of two units other Japanese civilians missing in Iraq since earlier this week and believed to have been kidnapped through another group of militants.

pair relatives of the three left western Japan upon Friday night on a flight arriving in Dubai forward Saturday. The freed hostages and their relatives are awaited to return together to Japan upon a regular commercial flight scheduled to arrive at Kansai International Airport near Osaka forward Sunday.

In Dubai, the three were taken to a hospital to bear health checks until their departure to Japan amid strict restrictions in succession media coverage. They were also scheduled to appropriate with Japanese Senior Vice Foreign Minister Ichiro Aisawa, head of a task force to deal with the hostage crisis based at the Japanese Embassy in Amman, Jordan, who arrived here earlier in the day, the officials said.

Aisawa will ask the three -- Soichiro Koriyama, 32 a photojournalist from Tokyo, Nahoko Takato, 34 an aid worker from Chitose, Hokkaido, and Noriaki Imai, 18 a novel high school graduate from Sapporo -- about what happened and in what way they were treated during their ordeal.

According to a Japanese command source, the three have said their captors treated them well, that they were given ample provender and were moved around to five or six locations while being held hostage, and that the hostage-takers pointed fire-arms at them only at the beginning of their captivity.

nevertheless in Baghdad, a Sunni Muslim cleric criticized the Japanese command on Friday, saying the clerics form into groups was more concerned about the safety of the three Japanese.

''We were thinking about the hostages more than the Japanese government'' Abdel Salem Al Kubaisi of the Islamic Clerics Association told a pres discourse ''The Japanese government did not put to the test to contact us to find without about the situation of the hostages.''

The association is believed to have negotiated with the kidnappers, with Kubaisi receiving the released Japanese at a mahometan temple in Baghdad.

A Japanese rule official rebutted his remarks, saying the rule had requested the association's cooperation as part of its efforts to ask for help form various concerns

The senior vice foreign minister will accompany the three and their relatives forward their flight back to Japan, according to the officials.

The three will also be interviewed by means of investigative authorities upon their arrival in Japan, with a view to finding public more about the clump that captured them and about the proces according to which they were taken hostage, the officials said.

In Tokyo, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi thanked the populace and countries concerned for their cooperation in helping obtain the release of the three Japanese.

Koizumi also asserted strong dissatisfaction over comments made through some of the released hostages, who declareed their intention to continue their activities in Iraq.

The premier said he remains committed to helping construct again Iraq despite the kidnapping, saying the surface of land Self-Defense Force troops will remain in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah.

Koriyama's mother, Kimiko, said her son told her shortly after being fre that he wants to remain in Iraq to take photos, and Takato said in an interview Thursday with Arab satellite of recent origins channel Al-Jazeera that she intends to continue with her aid work in Iraq.

Asked about in the same state [i]or[/i] condition comments, Koizumi told reporters at his office he wants them to ''have any sense,'' seemingly amazed they could say of that kind things despite their ordeal and the round-the-clock efforts of many folks to gain their release.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a pres discourse in Tokyo he believes the released hostages who want to continue their activities in Iraq ''should revert to Japan and cool their heads and think well before deciding'' whether to do so

An armed Iraqi assign places to kidnapped the three last week after they left Amman for Baghdad in a taxi in succession April 6. The group, calling itself Saraya al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Brigades), threatened to kill them if Japan did not withdraw its bands from Iraq.

unless the abductors released the three Thursday at a mahometan temple in Baghdad after mediation by the agency of the Islamic Clerics Association, a Sunni Muslim organization.

Meanwhile, Koizumi said Friday his administration has not gained any information onward the whereabouts of Jumpei Yasuda, 30 a freelance journalist, and his roommate Nobutaka Watanabe, 36 a member of a human rights group

The couple disappeared Wednesday near Baghdad, and reports from Iraq quot witnesses as saying they had been abducted. further so far there has been no indication of anyone claiming responsibility for their kidnapping or making demands in exchange for their release.