TOKYO, Oct 30 (AFP) - Japan said Saturday a body resembling that of a 24-year-old Japanese hostage had been found in Iraq after Tokyo refused demands by Al-Qaeda-linked militants to withdraw its troops from the country.
The US military found a body "that looks like a Japanese" in Balad north of Baghdad, Japanese foreign ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima said in a hastily called news conference in Tokyo.
Shosei Koda, a 24-year-old who had reportedly gone to Iraq as a tourist and was abducted after he failed to find an affordable hotel, was threatened with death unless Japan pulled its military from Iraq by late Thursday.
Takashima said the body was being transferred for verification to Doha, Qatar, but that it matched Koda in height, weight and a bald spot on the head.
"The body had some characteristics similar to Mr Koda which we had earlier sent to the US military," Takashima said.
Public broadcaster NHK said the body had two bullet wounds.
A Japanese envoy sent to the Jordanian capital Amman for the hostage crisis stressed that no final confirmation had been made.
"The body was sent to the embassy in Qatar for investigation. It will be done by Japanese doctors from the Qatar embassy and from the embassy in Kuwait who will come to help them," Senior Vice Foreign Minister Shuzen Tanigawa told reporters in Amman.
He said Koda`s family had been informed of the latest developments and he too would head to Qatar.
Japan`s government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda, cautioned that the verification process would take some time, with the most important step being to identify the fingerprints.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, one of the most vocal backers of the US-led war in Iraq, had said Tokyo would not bow to terrorism.
Japan has some 550 troops stationed in Iraq on a humanitarian mission. It is Japan`s first military deployment since World War II to an area of active fighting.
Ambushes by Iraqi insurgents killed two Japanese diplomats last year and two Japanese journalists in May, but Koda`s death would be the first killing of a Japanese hostage amid a wave of kidnappings in Iraq.
In April militants kidnapped three Japanese aid workers and two journalists who were released unharmed after days of mediation.
But the group that claimed the capture of Koda is one of the most violent in Iraq, led by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, an Osama bin Laden supporter blamed for a slew of bombings, killings and kidnappings.
Koda, a high school dropout and former house painter, had not been in contact with his family in the southern Japanese province of Fukuoka since July when he ended a working holiday in New Zealand.
Koda last week took a public bus from Amman to Baghdad out of curiosity and searched in vain for a hotel. Without enough money in his pocket for a return ticket to Jordan, Koda hopped into a waiting car when approached by young men who spoke English, according to press reports.
The next time Koda was seen was on an Internet video late Tuesday at the feet of three armed, masked insurgents. In a T-shirt and with unkempt hair, Koda told Koizumi politely that he would be beheaded if Japanese troops stayed in Iraq.
Asked whether the man had been beheaded as threatened, Takashima said it was unclear but noted that US authorities were able to see the full body.
His mother, Setsuko Koda, had made emotional appeals to the insurgents to spare him, saying her son had only peaceful intentions and no links with the Japanese government or military.
The mother appeared on the Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera and on Friday tearfully told a Tokyo press conference that she was the sole income earner in the family as her husband was ill.
"My son`s name (Shosei) means giving proof of life. I truly believe he will return alive. He was born to do good things for the world," she said.
The mother declined to offer an opinion on whether Japan should pull its army out of Iraq.
"We are just ordinary civilians. We are not in a position to tell the country to do this and that," she said with her head down.
"We only hope that peace will come to Iraq," she said.
10/29/2004 22:30 GMT - AFP