Japan abductee family reunion set for July 9
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-07-05 17:29

A Japanese woman abducted to North Korea decades ago and repatriated in 2002 will be reunited this week with the family she left behind in the country, a human drama that could help Japan's ruling party in an election on Sunday.

Hitomi Soga will meet her two daughters and husband Charles Jenkins, a former U.S. army sergeant who Washington says is a deserter, in Indonesia on Friday, Japan's top government spokesman said on Monday.

Hitomi Soga is seen arriving at a Tokyo hotel on May 21, 2004. Soga will be reunited this week with her two daughters and husband Charles Jenkins, a former U.S. Army sergeant who Washington says is a deserter, in Indonesia on Friday, Japan's top government spokesman said on July 5, 2004.  [Reuters]

The reunion is likely to provide a boost for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the election for parliament's upper house, but it also invites charges that Koizumi is using it for political gain.

"This is not a political issue. It's a reunion of a family. It's humanitarian," government spokesman Hiroyuki Hosoda told a news conference.

Jenkins, 64, who married Soga in North Korea, fears he would be handed to the U.S. military for a court martial if he came to Japan. Indonesia and the United States do not have an extradition treaty.

Hosoda said Japan would provide a chartered plane for Jenkins and the daughters to fly from Pyongyang to Jakarta, where the family will be reunited for an unspecified period.

Jenkins and their two North Korean-born daughters refused to come to Japan in May when Koizumi visited North Korea and won the release of the family members of other repatriated abductees during a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

The United States says Jenkins deserted to North Korea 40 years ago while on patrol in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. Jenkins' American relatives insist he was kidnapped by North Korea and brainwashed.

Soga was kidnapped in 1978 to teach Japanese to North Korean spies and returned to Japan in 2002 after a landmark visit by Koizumi to North Korea.

A televised reunion of Soga, Jenkins and their daughters could give Koizumi a boost ahead of the July 11 upper house election.

Recent surveys have suggested the main opposition Democratic Party could do better than the LDP on Sunday. A poor showing by the LDP would weaken Koizumi in what is expected to be his final two years in office and might even prompt calls within the party for his resignation.

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