4TH LD: U.S vows to prioritize abduction issue at G-8 summit

News Home Top Stories World Asia Pacific Business Technology Entertainment Sports Photos

Yahoo! Asia News

Search Yahoo! News

advertisement

Friday April 28, 9:05 AM

4TH LD: U.S vows to prioritize abduction issue at G-8 summit
(Kyodo) _ (EDS: ADDING INFO IN 3RD GRAF)
U.S. lawmakers and officials joined hands Thursday to prioritize the issue of Japanese and other foreign nationals abducted by North Korea at the Group of Eight summit in July in St. Petersburg, Russia, to press for their return.
The commitments came at a U.S. House of Representatives panel hearing where the mother of Japanese abductee Megumi Yokota testified and called for U.S. help and international economic sanctions against North Korea to force it to return Japanese and other abducted nationals.
In the strongest-ever show of U.S. concern over the issue, President George W. Bush will meet Megumi's mother, Sakie, and other visiting relatives of Japanese abductees Friday morning at the White House, along with North Korean defectors.
Yokota, 70, became the first relative of a Japanese abductee to testify at a U.S. congressional hearing. Her daughter was abducted at the age of 13 in 1977, and the case has become a symbol of the abductee issue in Japan.
"I know that the president's commitment to this issue is very sincere. I know he cares deeply about the issue of Japanese abductions," Jay Lefkowitz, U.S special envoy for human rights in North Korea, told the joint Asia-Pacific and human rights subcommittee hearing under the House International Relations Committee.

Lefkowitz agreed with Christopher Smith, chairman of the human rights subcommittee, who urged him to encourage Bush to give priority to the issue at the upcoming G-8 summit of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.
"Until the North Korean government is accountable honestly for the whereabouts of every one of the abductees, not only from Japan but from several other countries as well, it will not have any international legitimacy," Lefkowitz said.
Smith, a New Jersey Republican, said he will continue to press the administration by sending a letter to Bush and meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice next week.
Smith said the Japanese and South Koreans are important U.S. allies and that it "seems to me that this is the place where we could very significantly enhance our efforts on their behalf and on behalf of their people who have suffered the plight of abductions, and the G-8 is a golden opportunity for that."
Speaking to reporters after the hearing, the lawmakers said they were moved by Yokota's testimony and reaffirmed their commitments.
"I don't think there is any more moving instance on human relations today than the story of her family," said James Leach, chairman of the Asia and Pacific Subcommittee, who visited North Korea last August.
"We will enhance our efforts, we will try to do more, on her specific case, but also on all of these abduction cases," Smith said.
Leach, an Iowa Republican, said it "should be an issue of all countries and all families of the world."
Both Smith and Leach emphasized the need to "move quickly" to press North Korea to return the abductees.
On the verge of tears, Yokota said, "We as well as the parents of other abductees are running out of time because of our advancing age.
"It saddens me profoundly and I feel so humiliated whenever I think about why we cannot rescue her," Yokota said, stressing that her daughter Megumi and other abductees "must be alive somewhere in North Korea."
"We the families are fatigued, both physically and mentally, yet we cannot stop as long as our own children are seeking our help."
"Members of Congress, members of the administration and people of America, please render us your help," Yokota said.
"I plead for all countries to join us in saying that we will not forgive the abductions, all the victims must be returned immediately or we will initiate economic sanctions," she said.
Yokota also called for giving attention to people abducted by North Korea from South Korea and other nations, as well as North Korean people facing hardships and human rights abuses.
North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents abducted Megumi Yokota and 12 other Japanese in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and returned five of them to Japan. But it maintains that the other eight, including Megumi, had died -- a claim disputed by the Japanese government and the relatives of the eight.
The government has officially recognized 16 Japanese, including the 13, as having been abducted by North Korea.
Relatives of three others of the eight were present at the hearing to support Yokota. The three are Shuichi Ichikawa, who disappeared in 1978 when he was 22, Rumiko Masumoto, who vanished in 1978 at the age of 24, and Yaeko Taguchi, who disappeared in 1978 at the age of 22.