TOKYO — Vice President Dick Cheney will urge Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to press ahead with plans to double Japan’s noncombat forces in Iraq despite the furor over the abduction of three citizens, U.S. officials said yesterday.
The kidnapping of the Japanese civilians by Iraqi militants cast a pall over Mr. Cheney’s visit to Japan, his first stop on a weeklong Asia trip that also is taking the vice president to China and South Korea.
Mr. Cheney attended Easter services with his wife, Lynne, at a nondenominational English-speaking Protestant church in Tokyo.
After a stop at the U.S. Embassy, Mr. Cheney planned to meet with Mr. Koizumi and other officials today, with the kidnappings expected to come up.
Japanese officials in Jordan said they were talking with unidentified people in Iraq to gain the Japanese hostages’ release. A negotiator told the Japanese government the three civilians were unharmed and being held near Fallujah, Kyodo News reported, citing unidentified government sources.
Gunmen abducted Japanese aid workers Nahoko Takato and Naoki Imai and photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama last week, then sent video footage of masked men threatening the trio with guns and knives to the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera.
The hostage-takers also sent a statement to Al Jazeera on Thursday saying Tokyo had three days to meet their demand of withdrawing its soldiers from Iraq or they would burn the three to death.
Amid reports of intervention by Islamic clerics, however, Japanese authorities in Tokyo said yesterday they had received information the three would be freed.
The director of the Japanese emergency team, Senior Vice Foreign Minister Ichiro Aisawa, said the embassy was “in contact with somebody.” He declined to provide more information, saying it was a very sensitive time.
The hostage crisis is a challenge to Mr. Koizumi’s commitment to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. He was a strong supporter of the campaign to topple Saddam Hussein and pledged about 1,000 Japanese military personnel on a noncombat mission to help with reconstruction despite deep reservations in a nation with a post-World War II pacifist tradition.
Japan so far has about 530 ground troops in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah.
About 1,000 peace activists and other demonstrators gathered outside the prime minister’s residence for a third day yesterday, chanting and waving signs demanding that Japanese troops be pulled out to ensure the hostages’ release. A weekend poll suggested public opinion was split on the issue.
Mr. Koizumi said he would not bow to the demands of terrorists, even though the families pleaded with the government to consider even a temporary withdrawal.
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