N Korea talks watched with hope by abductee parents

KAWASAKI, Japan, Nov 19: The coming of November is painful for Sakie Yokota, since that's when North Korean agents kidnapped her 13-year-old daughter nearly three decades ago.

''It gets dark early, there's a certain feeling in the air.

And I know it's November again, and it's hard to bear,'' she said, just days after the anniversary of Megumi's disappearance on the way home from school in 1977.

But with six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear programme likely to resume next month after a year's hiatus, Sakie and husband Shigeru feel a glimmer of hope this November despite Pyongyang's recent missile launches and a nuclear test.

For growing international pressure is being brought to bear on the secretive Stalinist state to come clean on the fate of Japanese abductees -- ordinary citizens kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s to train spies -- and to send the survivors home.

Pyongyang says Megumi hanged herself in 1994.

While much of this pressure has been fanned by new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who rose to power largely due to his tough stance on North Korea, analysts say the real catalyst has been Sakie Yokota.

''The Yokotas are not state actors but individuals, but they've come to have a strong influence on Japanese diplomacy,'' said Takehiko Yamamoto, professor of international politics at Tokyo's Waseda University.

''Sakie's appeals as a mother have really awakened public opinion,'' he said, adding that her work had also raised public awareness overseas. ''She has more influence than any politician.'' Despite meeting US President George W Bush and testifying to US lawmakers this year, the frail-looking 70-year-old flatly denies this.

''I'm just one mother trying to get her child, who's been caught up in a kind of no-man's land, back to the place where she belongs,'' she told Reuters in a meeting room at the apartment building where she and Shigeru live in Kawasaki, outside Tokyo.

''I'm just an ordinary parent riding a wave of things that have happened, asking people to save my child.''

ABDUCTIONS, OUTRAGE

On the walls of the brightly lit room hung posters with photographs of Megumi, who has become the iconic face of the abductee issue. Shelves displayed books written by her parents. North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents had abducted 13 Japanese, sparking outrage in Japan.

Five were repatriated in 2002, with their families joining them later. Pyongyang says the other eight -- including Yokota -- are dead.

Tokyo wants more information about the eight and three others it says were also kidnapped, and demands the survivors be sent home. Police said on Friday they had recognised another woman as a victim of North Korean abduction, taking the total to 17.

The issue, something of a national obsession, has put Tokyo in a unique position in the North Korean talks forum since it insists on resolving this as well as the nuclear question.

Its stance has put it at odds with Pyongyang, which has said Japan should not bother to take part, and in the past has threatened to snarl negotiations.

But with participants more united than ever after North Korea's Oct 9 nuclear test, and rising international awareness of the abductions -- especially in the United States, where Bush has referred to Sakie in speeches -- the Yokotas believe progress may be near.

''Compared to the past, the other nations in the talks are together to solve the nuclear question as well as the abduction issue,'' Shigeru said. ''So I think the situation's hopeful.'' The return of the five abductees in 2002 led to a hardening of Japanese public opinion against North Korea, helping to lay the groundwork for change by leading Japan to adopt economic sanctions and influencing other nations, such as the United States, to do the same.

''Ultimately, the tears of Sakie Yokota helped the government change gears,'' said Waseda's Yamamoto. ''She helped bring about a change in public opinion, which the government had to follow.

The Yokotas, though, fear time is running out.

''We're tired, very tired, and every year our strength is less,'' said Sakie. ''But we've fought up to now and hope to see a resolution.''

REUTERS