We won't give in to terror - Japan PM

Japan’s prime minister Junichiro Koizumi today denounced terrorist threats to burn alive three hostages as ”cowardly”, vowing troops would stay in Iraq despite tearful pleas from the captives’ families to bow to the gunmen’s demands.

“We want to do everything we can to see that he comes home,” said Naoko Imai, whose 18-year-old son, Noriaki, was among the captives. “I want the government to pull the troops out.”

But as the drama unfolded and tested Japan’s commitment to the US-led coalition, there was little Koizumi could do except remain defiant.

“We cannot give in to the cowardly threats of terrorists,” he said. “Right now what we need to do is gather accurate information and bring them home safely.”

Television networks repeatedly aired dramatic video footage of the two aid workers Imai and Nahoko Takato, 34, and photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama, 32.

Koizumi called an emergency meeting of his cabinet and created a task force to co-ordinate a response.

He also ordered a senior foreign ministry official to co-ordinate rescue efforts from Jordan. The prime minister is expected to make a strong request for help from the United States when vice president Dick Cheney visits this weekend.

Officials acknowledged, however, that they had few other options.

Yasuo Fukuda, the cabinet’s chief spokesman and head of the emergency task force, confirmed the government had “absolutely no contact” with the hostage-takers, a previously unknown group calling itself the “Mujahideen Squadrons”.

He stressed that accepting the withdrawal demand was not under consideration.

“That would be doing just what the terrorists want,” he said. “We can’t be beaten by them.”

Details of the kidnapping remained sketchy, and it was not immediately clear where or when the three were captured.

But in a video obtained by television news, four masked men threaten the blindfolded captives with guns and knives as they lie on the floor of a room with concrete walls.

Arabic television network Al Jazeera, which received a copy of the video, said it came with a statement saying the three would be burned alive if Japan’s troops were not removed from Iraq within three days.

The kidnapping has put Koizumi’s administration under intense pressure and poses the biggest threat to his pro-US policy on Iraq since two diplomats preparing for the mission were gunned down – possibly by thieves – near the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit last November.

Koizumi’s decision to send 1,100 non-combat troops to Iraq in Japan’s biggest overseas dispatch since the Second World War has only a narrow margin of support from the public, which is wary that Iraq’s increasing instability could draw the troops into the line of fire.

That possibility was underscored on Wednesday, when mortars exploded near the base housing Japan’s troops just outside the south-eastern city of Samawah.

It was the first attack directed at the base since the Japanese contingent began arriving in Iraq in January. Defence agency officials confirmed there was another explosion in Samawah yesterday, but had no further details.

Families of the hostages, meanwhile, flew to Tokyo to meet foreign minister Yoriko Kawaguchi and made tearful pleas for the release of their relatives.

About 20 protesters gathered in front of Koizumi’s office, shouting: “Prime minister, don’t let the three be killed,” and waving banners that read: “Don’t lend our hand to the Iraqi occupation.”

The Iraq deployment has aroused deep sensitivities. Japan kept its troops out of harm’s way after its disastrous wartime defeat, and the country’s post-war constitution renounces the use of force to settle international disputes.

But Koizumi pushed for the Iraq dispatch to strengthen the alliance with the United States and share some of the burden of ensuring the flow of Middle East oil on which the country depends.