Before Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visits Pyongyang on Saturday, Tokyo hopes Washington will promise to pardon an American in North Korea wanted for desertion if he is allowed to come to Japan to reunite with his wife, who is one of the five repatriated abductees.
But the chances of such a pledge are unclear. The U.S. government is tightening military discipline in the wake of revelations that Iraqi prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad by U.S. forces have been abused, according to Japanese government officials.
The U.S. lists Charles Robert Jenkins, the husband of Hitomi Soga, who returned to Japan in 2002 after being abducted to North Korea in 1978, as having deserted the U.S. Army in 1965 while serving as a sergeant near the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.