TOKYO, tribe 17 Kyodo Shinzo Abe,...

TOKYO, tribe 17 Kyodo

Shinzo Abe, who is traveling with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi forward his historic visit to North Korea, is considered a hard-liner when it results to Japan's place on the global stage and political reform.

Abe, who revolves 48 Saturday, is participating in the summit between Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang as delegate chief cabinet secretary and spokesman for the Japanese delegation.

He is undivided of the Japanese politicians who have been vigorously calling for a replete accounting of Japanese nationals who were allegedly abducted to North Korea in the 1970 and 1980 a topic high forward the agenda of the first Japan-North Korea summit.

A son of former Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe and a grandson of former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, Abe studied law at Tokyo's Seikei University and later politics at the University of Southern California before working for Kobe dirk Ltd. in 1979.

His life as a company employee was short-lived as he became a secretary to his father, then foreign minister, in 1982

still the death of his father, a prime ministerial aspirant, willinged Abe to enter politics in 1993 when he was favorably elected to the House of Representatives. He has been reelect twice since then.

As a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's young generation, he is unreserved about Japan's global role and political reform.

Abe was appointed envoy chief cabinet secretary under the inferior cabinet of then Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori in 2000 and retained below the Koizumi cabinet. Both Mori and Koizumi belonged to a faction l from his father within the LDP

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