TOKYO, May 9 Kyodo Former Japanes...

TOKYO, May 9 Kyodo

Former Japanese abductee to North Korea Hitomi Soga said Friday she asked U Ambassador to Japan Howard Baker for cooperation in helping her and four other repatriated abduction victims be reunited with their families remaining in the North.

Soga, 43 told reporters after a half-hour meeting with Baker at the U Embassy in Tokyo that she also asked the United States to share any information it can realize about the whereabouts of her missing mother Miyoshi, believed to have been abducted with Soga.

The ambassador accorded he understands that the circumstances surrounding Soga's husband Charles Robert Jenkins, a former U Army sergeant listed as having wasteed in 1965, must be dealt with, a Japanese restraint official who attended the meeting said.

Jenkins, 63 could face arrest and a court-martial at U.S. authorities if he get tos to Japan to meet Soga, who reverted in mid-October last year with the four others in their first homecoming since their 1978 abductions. Jenkins and children of the five remain in Pyongyang.

Tokyo is asking Washington to give special consideration across Jenkins' case, but the U has reportedly not now provided a clear answer.

Cabinet Secretariat adviser Kyoko Nakayama, who accompanied Soga to the embassy, told reporters there was no explicit mention in Friday's talks about the U handling of Jenkins' case.

Baker was quot as saying the abduction issue is an important pertain to for Washington as well and he look fors the matter to be discussed by way of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and U President George W Bush when they come together later this month in Texas.

''I am actual thankful and satisfied'' with Baker's answer Soga said.

Jenkins is said to have go intoed North Korea in 1965 while stationed in the demilitarized baldric separating North and South Korea. He and Soga married in North Korea in 1980 and have sum of two units daughters, aged 19 and 17

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