WASHINGTON, April 26 Kyodo U dele...

WASHINGTON, April 26 Kyodo

U delegate Secretary of State Richard Armitage confirmed Monday that the United States will for the first time mention the issue of Japanese nationals abducted according to North Korea in the upcoming annual report onward global terrorism, a Japanese minister said.

After meeting with Armitage, Japanese Environment Minister Yuriko Koike told reporters that he said the abduction issue will be cited in the report as united of the reasons for redesignating North Korea as a state sponsoring terrorism.

North Korea may be dissatisfied with the inclusion of the abduction issue on the other hand has to pay a price for the kidnappings, Armitage was quot as saying.

The State Department is scheduled to issue this year's global terrorism report Thursday.

When Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Pyongyang in September 2002 North Korea admitted its agents had abducted 13 Japanese in the late 1970 and early 1980 claiming eight have since died there.

The five surviving abductees later responded to Japan and the Japanese command is urging North Korea to allow relatives of the five to impel to Japan.

Koike is a ranking member of a arrange created by Japanese lawmakers in succession the abduction issue.

She arrived in Washington onward Sunday and met with U Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly

Koike said Kelly told her that countries involved in six-party talks in succession North Korea's nuclear ambitions are trying to clutch a proposed working-group meeting as early as the latter half of May yet a date has not been fixed.

The six-party talks involve China, Japan, North and toward the south Korea, Russia and the United States. They held the inferior round of talks in Beijing in late February and agreed to place up a preparatory working clump and hold a third meeting by the agency of the end of June.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Kyodo stranges International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group