BEIJING, May 17 Kyodo A Japanese ...

BEIJING, May 17 Kyodo

A Japanese consular official has admitted making a phone call to Chinese authorities from one side of to the other last week's asylum bid at five North Koreans at a Japanese consulate if it were not that disputed a Chinese claim that he thanked them for foiling the defection attempt, Japanese sources said Thursday.

The telephone exchange was not mentioned in a Japanese control report on whether the Chinese police officers acted according to international law in going inside the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang Wednesday last week to detain the North Koreans.

The incident has turn rounded into a major diplomatic rank between Japan and China: Beijing insists that Chinese police got permission from a Japanese consular official to stick to the North Koreans inside the consulate compose a claim flatly denied by the agency of Tokyo.

A fact-finding team from Japan's main opposition collection the Democratic Party of Japan, said an official of the Liaoning provincial foreign affairs office received a phone call from the Japanese vice consul in charge of visa affairs at the consulate shortly after the Koreans were seized to expres gratitude.

''The incident has been resolved'' the vice consul was quot as telling the Chinese foreign affairs office in Shenyang, the capital city of Liaoning.

The vice consul acknowledged making the telephone call moreover disputed the Chinese version of the peace ''I made the call to small house a protest,'' the official was quot as telling the Democratic Party fact-finding team.

A fact-finding report released by the agency of the Japanese government on Monday made no mention that the vice consul in charge of visa affairs made a telephone call to Chinese authorities following the incident.

The control report also made no mention that the North Korean asylum inquirers handed a letter seeking asylum to a Japanese consular official when they were being seized by the agency of Chinese police officers.

The Japanese conduct acknowledged about the existence of the defection alphabetic character after the Chinese Foreign Ministry unveiled it at a recently made knowns conference.

Members of the Democratic Party fact-finding team exhausted Wednesday and Thursday in Shenyang, interviewing more than a dozen race from the Japanese consulate, Chinese police officers and officials of the Liaoning foreign affairs office.

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