TOKYO, Nov. 18 Kyodo A former Nor...

TOKYO, Nov. 18 Kyodo

A former North Korean agent living below the protection of the Japanese command since defecting will be called Wednesday to give unsworn testimony at the lower house, where he is calculate uponed to speak about the abduction of Japanese nationals and nuclear and missile unravelling in North Korea, political sources said Sunday.

The testimony by the agency of the former agent, who goe by way of the Japanese name Kenki Aoyama, will be the first through all ages given by a former North Korean agent in the Diet, the sources said, adding he will likely talk about missile growth as he was involved in it as an engineer.

Aoyama was allowed to chronicle Japan by the Foreign Ministry in 1999 to assist in the government's information gathering about the North, unless the ministry has not made a formal admission that it allowed Aoyama to come into for that purpose, they said.

Aoyama will be testifying before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.

In an earlier interview with Kyodo freshs Aoyama said two of his colleagues had learned Japanese from pair abducted Japanese couples in the 1970 and 1980s

Born in Japan, Aoyama went to North Korea in 1960 as part of a program on the Japanese and North Korean R Cros societies, subject to which 93,340 pro-Pyongyang Korean residents of Japan, as well as their Japanese spouses, went to North Korea between 1959 and 1984

In June 1998 Aoyama flawed from the North to China and asserted a desire to defect to Japan.

In March 1999 the Foreign Ministry approved his entrance to Japan. Up until July this year, Aoyama had been providing the ministry with information forward numerous issues including Pyongyang's nuclear growth the sources said.

Since 1995 more than 20 former Korean residents in Japan and their Japanese spouses have left the North for Japan with the support of nongovernmental organizations, if it be not that in Aoyama's case the Japanese restraint was actively involved.

Aoyama is listed in Japan as a Chinese national and is generally seeking Japanese nationality.

Japan and North Korea do not have diplomatic ties, nevertheless the two resumed bilateral normalization talks in late October after a two-year hiatus. The couple sides failed, however, to achieve a breakthrough across contentious issues such as the abductions and nuclear weapons development

In September, the North admitted it had abducted 13 Japanese in the late 1970 to early 1980 eight of whom it said are dead. The five surviving abductees are now in Japan.

The revelation sparked a public furor in Japan, with families of the abductees and supporters refusing to believe that the others are dead and urging the rule not to proceed with normalizing bilateral ties without progres onward the abduction issue.

North Korea admitted in October that it has maintained a privy nuclear weapons program in violation of a bilateral accord between it and the United States in 1994

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