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REFILING: 3RD LD: Bush meets Yokota's mother to stress commitment on abduction issue+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)WASHINGTON, April 28_(Kyodo) _ (EDS: FIXING TYPO AT 3RD GRAF) U.S. President George W. Bush met the mother of Japanese abductee Megumi Yokota on Friday at the White House, demonstrating the U.S. commitment to press North Korea to return Japanese and other nationals abducted by the North's agents in the past. Bush told Megumi's 70-year-old mother, Sakie, "It's hard to believe that a country would foster abduction." "It's hard to imagine that a leader of any country would encourage abduction of a young child, and yet that's exactly what happened to this mom," he said. If North Korea wants to be respected by the international community, it must respect human rights, Bush said. "I assure you strongly" to work for human rights and to work for freedom, the president told Sakie. Ahead of her meeting with Bush, Sakie told reporters on her way to the White House, "We hope for his help so that the abduction victims will be able to gain freedom within this year." His first such meeting came a day after Yokota testified at a congressional hearing, during which U.S. lawmakers and senior administration officials expressed their intention to prioritize the abduction issue at the Group of Eight summit in July in St. Petersburg, Russia, to press for the return of the abductees. Megumi was abducted at the age of 13 in 1977, and her case has become a symbol of the abductee issue in Japan. The White House meeting also included other Japanese relatives and a North Korean family -- a couple and their 6-year-old daughter -- who defected to South Korea via a Japanese consulate in Shenyang, northern China, in May 2002. In her testimony, Yokota called for U.S. help and international economic sanctions against North Korea to force it to return Japanese and other abducted nationals, becoming the first relative of a Japanese abductee to speak at a U.S. congressional hearing. "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 of Representatives International Relations Committee. Lefkowitz agreed with Christopher Smith, chairman of the global 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 by 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. "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 told U.S. lawmakers, "We as well as the parents of other abductees are running out of time because of our advancing age." Also visiting Washington with Yokota are Megumi's brother Takuya, 37, Teruaki Masumoto, 50, whose older sister Rumiko was abducted in 1978 at age 24, Kenichi Ichikawa, 61, whose younger brother Shuichi vanished in 1978 at age 22, and Shigeo Iizuka, 67, whose younger sister Yaeko Taguchi was kidnapped in 1978 when she was 22. North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents abducted the four and nine other Japanese in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and returned five of them to Japan. But it maintains that the other eight, including the four, 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. |