Bush recalls Megumi's mother in urging N. Korea to return abductees

0 Comments | Asian Political News, April 30, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 27 Kyodo

U.S. President George W. Bush recalled Friday his ''emotional'' meeting with Sakie Yokota, the mother of Japanese abductee Megumi, last year in reaffirming his commitment to pressing North Korea to return Japanese and other abductees.

Bush made the comments at a joint press conference with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when asked if resolving the abduction issue still remains as the precondition for Washington's negotiations with Pyongyang over removing North Korea from a list of states sponsoring terrorism.

''Any discussion about ways forward...should not obscure my strong sentiment about the abductee issue,'' Bush said at the press conference held after the summit talks at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland just outside of Washington.

''I was affected by her visit to the Oval Office,'' Bush said. ''It broke my heart to be in the presence of a Japanese mother whose love for her daughter has not diminished over time and her grief is sincere and real.''

In April last year, Bush met with Sakie Yokota at the White House Oval Office in an unprecedented show of his commitment to the abduction issue, saying it was ''one of the most moving meetings'' of his presidency and vowing to press North Korea to return the abductees.

The issue was high on the agenda for Abe amid growing concerns in Japan that Washington is softening its stance on Pyongyang and that Tokyo may be isolated due to its persistent insistence on not participating in aid to North Korea without first seeing progress on resolving the abduction issue.

''I told the president that before my departure this time, Mrs. Yokota had told me ever since she last heard from her daughter, Megumi, that the most moving moment was her meeting with the president,'' Abe said.

''So the president expressed his...unvarying commitment to support of the government of Japan on this abduction issue,'' he said.

Bush and Abe also said they agreed to take ''tougher'' action if Pyongyang continues to fail to implement the initial denuclearization steps it agreed to take within 60 days in exchange for energy aid in a Feb. 13 accord at the six-party talks on its nuclear programs.

Megumi Yokota was abducted by North Korea in 1977 at the age of 13 and remains missing. She has since become a symbol of the abduction issue.

She was among the 13 Japanese nationals North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents abducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s, reportedly to use their identities and for them to teach Japanese language and culture to spies.

Pyongyang has returned five of the 13 abductees, but maintains that the other eight, including Yokota, are dead, a claim rejected by their families and the Japanese government.