U.S. lawmakers and officials joined hands Thursday to prioritize at the Group of Eight summit in July in St. Petersburg, Russia, the abductions by North Korea of Japanese and other foreign nationals and to press for their return.
The commitments came at a U.S. House of Representatives panel hearing where Sakie Yokota, whose daughter, Megumi, was abducted by Pyongyang, testified and called for U.S. help and international economic sanctions against North Korea to force it to return Japanese and other abducted nationals.
In the strongest-ever show of U.S. concern over the issue, President George W. Bush was to meet Yokota other visiting relatives of Japanese abductees Friday morning at the White House, along with North Korean defectors.