Japan says it didn&#39;t offer ransom for release of hostage
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The Foreign Ministry has dismissed an Islamic militant organization&#39;s claim that Tokyo offered a ransom for the release of a Japanese man the group abducted and later murdered.
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Japan on Wednesday brushed aside growing pressure from US lawmakers for a fresh apology for Tokyo&#39;s wartime sexual enslavement of an estimated 200,000 women.
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Earlier Tuesday Japan&#39;s Justice Ministry rejected his demand to stay in the country, saying no justification had been found to grant him protection as a political refugee.
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Japan has made little progress contacting the kidnappers of one of its citizens or determining where the man is being held, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said.
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Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi  said Wednesday he would not withdraw troops from Iraq despite a  threat by a militant group to behead a Japanese hostage within  48 hours unless Tokyo pulled its forces out.
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A decapitated body found in Iraq was identified Sunday as a Japanese backpacker taken hostage by Islamic militants, but Tokyo insisted it would not cut short its dispatch of troops there and vowed to combat terrorism.
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A headless body found in Baghdad has been confirmed as that of a Japanese hostage whose captors had threatened to kill him if Japan did not pull out its troops, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said on Sunday.
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Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has said  Japan will not pull its troops out of Iraq despite threats by a  group led by an al Qaeda ally to behead a Japanese hostage,  Japanese media reported on Wednesday.
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&quot;There is a possibility that this is the body of the Japanese hostage, but it has yet to be identified,&quot; a ministry spokesman said on Saturday.
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Japan sought international help on  Thursday for a Japanese man held hostage in Iraq, with less  than 24 hours to go for a deadline set by his captors to behead  him unless Tokyo withdraws its troops.
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Japan has denounced the beheading of a Japanese hostage in Iraq after a day that saw the heaviest US casualties for six months and the bloodiest attack on a media organisation since the start of the war.
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Tokyo says it is freezing food aid to North Korea for not co-operating in a probe into missing Japanese.
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Efforts to rescue a Japanese hostage in Iraq continued Wednesday with a call from Japan&#39;s foreign minister on the abductors to free the young man while the British hostage in
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A body found in Iraq cannot be confirmed as that of a young Japanese man taken hostage and the corpse has been sent to Qatar for identification, Japan's Senior Vice Foreign Minister Shuzen Tanigawa said.
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Video posted Tuesday on a militant Islamic Web site showed what it claimed was a Japanese captive kidnapped by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group and threatened to behead him within 48 hours unless Japan pulls its troops from Iraq. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi rejected the demand.
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Japan insisted it would not bow to the demands of Islamic militants in Iraq who threatened to behead a young Japanese unless Tokyo withdraws its troops from the country within 48 hours.
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PM Junichiro Koizumi says Japan is not satisfied with North Korea's explanations over Japanese it kidnapped.