Cheney meets N Korea abductee's parents in Japan

TOKYO, Feb 22 (Reuters) He didn't have time to meet Japan's defence minister, who has questioned the Iraq war, but U S Vice President Dick Cheney squeezed in a chat today with a couple whose daughter was abducted by North Korea decades ago.

In a nod to the importance of the abductees issue for Japan, Cheney met Sakie and Shigeru Yokota, whose 13-year-old daughter Megumi was snatched from her homeland one November day 30 years ago, one of several Japanese kidnapped by North Korean agents to help train spies in language and culture.

''I know it means a great deal to the Japanese people,'' Cheney told the Yokotas in the meeting at U S Ambassador to Japan Thomas Scheiffer's residence in Tokyo.

''The Prime Minister discussed it with me last night.'' The abductees' tragic tale is known to almost every Japanese, but has garnered relatively little attention in the United States, despite unflagging efforts by the Yokotas and other relatives to take their campaign abroad.

Last year, Sakie met U S President George W Bush and testified before American lawmakers.

''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,'' Sakie Yokota told Reuters last November.

In talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other Japanese leaders yesterday, Cheney sought to reassure Washington's close ally that a U S troop increase in Iraq would quell violence, and to coordinate policies toward North Korea.

The United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia agreed in a deal forged in Beijing last week that Pyongyang would receive fuel aid in return for closing and eventually disabling its nuclear facilities.

But Abe has refused to provide aid to North Korea unless there is progress toward resolving Tokyo's feud with Pyongyang over the abductees -- an emotive topic for many ordinary Japanese and one that has long been high on Abe's own political agenda.

Cheney expressed understanding for Tokyo's tough stance during his visit, but critics have said the position could isolate Japan if progress is made toward denuclearisation.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il admitted in 2002 that Pyongyang's agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens.

Five have since returned to Japan.

Pyongyang says that Megumi Yokota hanged herself in 1994 and that the other seven are also dead.

But Tokyo is demanding more information about the fate of the eight and others it says were also kidnapped, and wants any survivors sent home.

Having wrapped up his visit to close ally Japan, which has backed the U S strategy in Iraq, Cheney was to leave for Guam and then Australia, where he will meet Prime Minister John Howard, another supporter of the war.

The trip came as Britain this week announced a timetable for the withdrawal of a quarter of its troops from Iraq.

REUTERS PDS RN0655