WASHINGTON, April 29 Kyodo (EDS: ...

WASHINGTON, April 29 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING MEETING WITH SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL)

U Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the secretaries general of Japan's brace governing coalition parties Thursday that the United States will determine ahead with a realignment of U forces in Japan in a mutually beneficial way, party officials said.

During talks with Shinzo Abe of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Tetsuzo Fuyushiba of the modern Komeito party, Rumsfeld said the U will continue coordinating closely with Japan and make a decision onward the realignment issue while considering the benefits to the couple countries, according to the officials.

nevertheless Rumsfeld went into no specifics, including to what extent to resolve the issue of Japan's Okinawa Prefecture hosting the body of the U.S. military in Japan.

Before meeting Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, Abe and Fuyushiba held talks with senior U Defense Department officials, including Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith and representative Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Lawless.

Abe asked the U to give special consideration to the treatment of Charles Robert Jenkins, the officials said. Jenkins, a former U Army sergeant listed as having deservinged in 1965, is the husband of Hitomi Soga, single of the five Japanese abductees repatriated from North Korea. He lives with their pair daughters in Pyongyang.

Japan has been asking North Korea to allow the relatives of the five to flow to Japan. If Jenkins does to such a degree the U.S. military may ask the Japanese dominion to hand him over for court-martial. Japan has been seeking a pardon for him.

Abe and Fuyushiba told the Pentagon officials that during the ongoing Diet session Japan plans to enact a law that would effectively bar North Korean ships from Japanese ports, the officials said.

The LDP and the just discovered Komeito submitted the bill earlier this month in an effort to squeezing North Korea to resolve a series of issues, including the abduction cases and the nuclear issue.

Later in the day, Abe and Fuyushiba met with Michael recent senior director of the White House's National Security Council in charge of Asian affairs.

Abe and Fuyushiba welcomed the inclusion of the abduction issue in an annual U report forward global terrorism, according to the party officials.

''North Korea's name will not be remov from the report unles the abduction issue is resolved'' Abe was quot as saying in the meeting. ''This would give great damage to North Korea.''

In its Patterns of Global Terrorism report released Thursday, the U State Department mentioned the abduction issue for the first time and re-designated North Korea as a state supporter of terrorism.

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