Alleged deserter unsure where reunited family will go

JAKARTA, Indonesia – An alleged U.S. Army deserter who fled to North Korea 40 years ago said he wants his reunited family to remain together but he has yet to say where they would live, a Japanese official said Sunday.

Meanwhile, the family of North Carolina native Charles Robert Jenkins has reportedly asked President Bush to pardon the former sergeant, who is still wanted on desertion charges.

Jenkins and his two daughters had an emotional reunion with his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga, at Jakarta’s international airport on Friday before going to a five-star hotel in central Jakarta. The family had been apart since Soga returned to Japan in 2002 – 24 years after being abducted by North Korean agents.

The reunion was held in Indonesia because it does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. Indonesia has said the family can stay here as long as it wants. Soga reportedly wants to persuade her husband to return to Japan.

In North Carolina, lawyer James B. Craven III mailed a petition Friday to the Justice Department on behalf of Jenkins’ family in North Carolina, the Raleigh News and Observer reported.

Jenkins, 64, was serving in an Army unit based on the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea when he disappeared during a patrol in 1965.

Craven said former presidents granted executive clemency to Vietnam War resisters, soldiers who were absent without leave and those who, like Jenkins, were accused of desertion but never tried.

Jenkins’ family in North Carolina has had no contact with him since 1965. His mother, now 91, is in poor health.

The family drama has entranced Japan, leading to accusations that the reunion was engineered by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to offset his sagging popularity before Sunday’s parliamentary elections. The government denies that.

The Japanese government is footing the bill for the visit, including chartering a plane to fly Jenkins and his daughters from Pyongyang to Jakarta.