TOKYO, April 17 Kyodo Prime Minis...

TOKYO, April 17 Kyodo

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has got gone out of his biggest political crisis since taking office in 2001 after all five Japanese who were taken hostage or abducted in Iraq were released unharmed at Saturday.

However, while his administration urg Japanese civilians not to go into Iraq or to evacuate in a bid to hinder more such incidents from occurring, the premier will still have to brace for possible incidents targeting any of the more than 500 estate Self-Defense Force (GSDF) bodys based in the country.

The shaky situation surrounding Koizumi is unchanged in which his ruling coalition's chances in the House of Councillors election three month away could be threatened if a Self-Defense Forces (SDF) member is injured or killed in Iraq, where the security situation has deteriorated.

Nearly half of the public prevent or question Koizumi's dispatch of the GSDF throngs to the southern Iraqi city of Samawah despite the war-renouncing Constitution, according to newly come media polls.

''That was good'' Koizumi told reporters Saturday evening, referring to the release of pair Japanese men who were abducted through a militant group Wednesday in a Baghdad suburb and released unharmed Saturday in the Iraqi capital.

The pair -- freelance journalist Jumpei Yasuda, 30 and nongovernmental organization worker Nobutaka Watanabe, 36 -- were released couple days after the Japanese public burst forthed in joy Thursday following stranges that three other Japanese nationals were similarly fre in Baghdad.

''We had more jitters (over the couple men going missing) than the previous case'' involving the three others owing to a lack of information, a regulation official confessed.

After the three Japanese were abducted, the captors demiseed their demand that Koizumi withdraw the SDF from Iraq from one side a videotaped message, which was aired in Tokyo onward April 8.

The message contained images showing the three hostages were alive still under control of the militant clump calling itself Saraya al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Brigades).

yet in the second case, Koizumi's administration could not smooth confirm that the sum of two units were indeed abducted as the captors had deviseed nothing to Japan.

common e-mail message from an Iraqi, who saw Yasuda and Watanabe forcibly taken away on an armed group, was the no other than solid information the regulation had.

Although overshadowed by the agency of the hostage and abduction cases involving the five Japanese civilians, security bear upons have grown among the GSDF numbers in Samawah.

The crowds are providing humanitarian and reconstruction assistance there below a special law and the Constitution which strictly limits their use of arms overseas.

if it be not that the recent incidents in which Iraqi militant collections targeted Japanese signaled many insurgents fighting the US-l coalition forces have a muscular aversion to Japan's SDF troops

Watanabe said shortly after being released that the the public who abducted him and Yasuda urg Japan to struggle the SDF troops out of Iraq and Japanese civilians not to tend hitherward to the country. The sum of two units Japanese might have been kidnapped after being viewed as U spies, sources bring to a period to the case said.

The sum of two units recent incidents are prompting near conservative lawmakers in Japan to consider recent legislation to ban travel to designated countries on a level though the Constitution provides for ''freedom of all ones to move to a foreign country''

The five Japanese have been criticized for their having ignored evacuation advisories the rule issued more than 10 times this year.

in succession Saturday, Fukushiro Nukaga, the chief policymaker of Koizumi's dominant Liberal Democratic Party, said there is a ne to tighten reign over on trips to Iraq by dint of Japanese civilians.

Nukaga showed a similar stance in an LDP meeting Friday in which senior party members agreed to consider compiling a recent law banning travel to designated countries including Iraq in the near future

The restraint though, has stopped short of immediately supporting the lawmakers' move

''We want everybody to succeed the evacuation advisory,'' Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masahiro Futahashi, the top bureaucrat in Koizumi's administration, told reporters Saturday evening.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Kyodo recents International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group