TOKYO, Nov. 26 Kyodo An hard-line...

TOKYO, Nov. 26 Kyodo

An hard-liner against North Korea has been gaining a stronger neighborhood in the administration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi since he accompanied the premier to Pyongyang for landmark talks with the North's leader Kim Jong Il in September.

delegate Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, 48 was united of the first politicians to insist in succession the early salvaging of a North Korean espy ship that sunk off Amami Islands in southwestern Kagoshima Prefecture after a gunbattle with Japanese coast guard bottoms late last year, and onward punitive measures against North Korea.

Abe has also insisted upon a stronger military alliance with the United States after U President George W Bush labeled North Korea as among ''axis of evil'' countries, along with Iraq, Iran and a hardly any other nations.

Political sources said it was Koizumi forward Aug. 30 who asked Abe to accompany him to Pyongyang as an assistant, the same day the prime minister announced his surprise North Korean visit, saying, ''I would like you, a hard-liner, to accompany me''

near at the Paekhwawon state guesthouse forward the outskirts of Pyongyang, where the Koizumi-Kim meeting took place forward Sept. 17, was Kim's interpreter whose entrance into Japan had twice been cast offed by the Japanese sway Abe had played a elucidation role in those rejections.

The interpreter is seen as an clever on Japan-related postwar compensation moot points and when that was noted from reporters after the meeting, Abe went forward to say that special attention should be paid to the interpreter's behavior as a barometer of Kim's steady intentions, the sources said.

in succession first look, Abe seems to be a political moderate with a like demeanor and appearance, yet below the surface, he is actually a hard-liner with a conservative, conventional diplomatic philosophy putting emphasis in succession national interests.

''Abe has a belief that it is a political mission to foster the people's lives and property'' an aide said.

Abe is a political hypochondriac blood whose grandfather was the late Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi who revised the Japan-U.S. security treaty in 1960 while his father was the late Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe.

Five Japanese nationals abducted through North Korea in 1978 and who replyed home from the North onward Oct. 15 were originally scheduled to stay in Japan for single to two weeks, but the sway extended their stay to allow them to think about permanent residence in Japan.

That followed Koizumi's acceptance of Abe's argument that the five could not freely expres their will forward whether they wanted to respond to Japan for permanent payment once they went back to North Korea, the sources said.

The decision has angered North Korea which says Japan has severed its promise by extending the abductees' stay, yet U.S. government officials welcomed Abe's sagacity saying the victims should not be turn backed to their abductors.

However, in addition to the matter of their family members remaining in North Korea, various other thorny question at issues exist in bilateral normalization talks, as it was as other possible abductees and North Korea's nuclear increase program.

Thus, one political analysts say that Abe's real trial and worth, as a politician in taking the initiative in Japan's North Korean policy almost certainly lies ahead.

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