US Vice President Dick Cheney told Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Monday that he was doing the right thing by resisting mounting political pressure and keeping troops in Iraq despite shock over the kidnapping of three Japanese civilians.
Cheney said Washington would do all it could to secure the release of the three from Iraqi insurgents, but a senior administration official warned that giving in to their demands for withdrawing troops would only encourage more hostage-taking.
"We wholeheartedly support the position the prime minister has taken with respect to the question of Japanese hostages," Cheney told reporters after meeting Koizumi in Tokyo.
"We have consulted closely with the prime minister and his government to make certain we do everything we can to be of assistance," Cheney said.
Grim developments in Iraq, including the kidnapping of seven Chinese on the eve of Cheney's visit to Beijing on Tuesday, threatened to overshadow each leg of his three-nation tour, which was postponed last year because of the start of the Iraq war.
Seven South Koreans were taken hostage last week but released. A leading architect of the war who once predicted that invading US troops would be "greeted as liberators", Cheney will visit Seoul before returning to Washington on Friday.
The United States fears any wavering by Japan could result in a broader retreat by coalition partners from the worst violence since the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago.
The abduction of the three Japanese civilians has created a major test for Koizumi in a country divided by his decision to send about 550 non-combat troops to Iraq. The kidnappers have threatened to kill the three unless Japan announces a troop withdrawal.
While he expressed concern over the fate of the hostages, Cheney made it clear Washington believed Koizumi was taking "exactly the right stance in terms of refusing to bow to the effort of terrorists to intimidate or change the policies of the Japanese government", the official said.
"If governments respond to those kinds of actions, it will simply encourage more of the same," the official added.
"No government, in my estimation, can fulfill its obligations and responsibilities to its own citizens, or be an effective participant in the international community, if it allows those kinds of threats to change and alter basic fundamental policy."
Hours earlier, Japan put three planes on stand-by in Kuwait ready to airlift the hostages out of Iraq if their captors freed them, but the country - and Cheney's delegation - remained on tenterhooks awaiting news of their fate.
China, regarded as a friend by Iraq's former Baathist government, objected to the US-led invasion of Iraq without UN backing, but it pledged $24 million for rebuilding the country at a donor conference in Madrid last year.
A senior administration official said Cheney and Koizumi discussed the stand-off with Pyongyang but reported no progress. "There's still a good way to go," the official said.