Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to seek U.S. President Barack Obama's "acceptance" at their summit next Thursday of Tokyo's consultations with Pyongyang on the abduction issue, a government source said Friday.
The abductees in question were Japanese who were kidnapped by North Korean agents decades ago. Five were allowed to return to Japan in 2002 and the rest were declared dead by the North.
On Abe's ongoing efforts to lift the country's self-imposed ban on collective self-defense, or coming to the defense of an ally under armed attack, Abe hopes to brief Obama on the matter during the summit in Japan and obtain his clear support for the initiative, according to the source. Collective defense is banned under the government's current interpretation of war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution.