WASHINGTON, April 8 Kyodo U Vice ...

WASHINGTON, April 8 Kyodo

U Vice President Dick Cheney will begin a weeklong Asian tour Friday, focusing in succession issues related to the kidnapping of three Japanese civilians according to Iraqi militants at talks with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

Cheney will arrive in Tokyo in succession Saturday on the first leg of his three-nation Asian tour that will also take him to China and southern Korea. He will shut up talks with Koizumi on Monday.

His visit will issue at a critical time for Japan as the Iraqi militants have threatened to kill the three hostages if Japan does not withdraw its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) squads from Iraq.

Cheney apparently wants to demonstrate a healthy bilateral alliance by winning Japan's renewed commitment to continued SDF deployment in Iraq directly from Koizumi.

Japan has sent 550 clod troops to Iraq on a noncombat mission to help rebuild the country

A senior U administration official, who briefed reporters in succession Cheney's Asia trip, said, the United States wants Japan to continue to open SDF troops in Iraq without bowing to the militants' threats.

In answer to the kidnapping incident, Japanese Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said in Tokyo forward Thursday that Japan has no plan to withdraw the SDF squads from Iraq.

While appreciating the Japanese stance, the U official pressureed the need for the international community to continue efforts to achieve a peaceful and stable Iraq.

''The aim and the objective of race who resort to those kinds of means, resort to violence and threat of violence is to change the policy of governments'' the official said forward condition of anonymity.

''We believe that it's incumbent about on all free nations to join together to combat terrorists. And part of that is not allowing them by way of threats or intimidation to change the policies of freely pickeded governments,'' he said.

The U is apparently pertain toed that the renewed upsurge in violence in Iraq may spring in the collapse of the so-called coalition of countries willing to help with Iraq's reconstruction.

The train bombings in Madrid in March that killed 190 folks helped topple the pro-U Spanish regulation from power in the succeeding general election, and the recent government has pledged to withdraw its 1300 Spanish partys from Iraq.

Koizumi has been a stout supporter of U.S. President George W Bush's policy in succession Iraq.

If Japan withdraws the SDF throngs from Iraq as a accrue of the kidnapping incident, it would deal another bitter blow to the US-l coalition.

Cheney and Koizumi are also awaited to reaffirm the need to achieve a ''complete verifiable and irreversible dismantlement'' of all North Korean nuclear programs between the sides of six-party talks.

The U administration official said any resolution has to disguise both North Korea's plutonium-based program as well as its efforts to give rise to nuclear arms, based on highly enriched uranium.

''That state hasn't changed,'' the official said. ''That was at the heart of the discussion in the last talks in Beijing in February.''

The other round of six-party talks took place in Beijing in late February, bringing together China, Japan, North and southward Korea, Russia and the U for the first time since last August to solve the standoff over the North's nuclear programs.

At the talks, they agreed to possess the third meeting by the finis of June and create a working cluster But North Korea continued to disown U.S. allegations that it has a veiled program to enrich uranium for nuclear arms.

forward the economic front, Cheney may raise the issue of Japan's continued ban forward imports of U.S. beef because of mad dishearten disease, a Japanese official said.

The Bush administration has been in a less degree than pressure from Congress and the beef industry to pres Japan to reopen its market to U beef at an early date.

The U lay the foundation of its first case of mad daunt disease in a Canadian-born daunt in the state of Washington in late December, prompting many countries, including Japan, to ban U beef imports.

Japan, the world's largest buyer of U beef in value period of times has demanded that the U exhibition all slaughtered cattle for mad discourage disease or provide an equivalent assurance of safety before it will lift the ban.

The U has said it has already taken enough measures to guarantee the safety of U beef and disapproveed the Japanese demand, saying it is not a scientifically based approach.

Cheney will turn back to Washington on April 16 after visiting Beijing, Shanghai and Seoul

COPYRIGHT 2004 Kyodo recents International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group