Malaysia is prepared to host a meeting between a US army deserter living in North Korea and his Japanese wife, a senior foreign ministry official said yesterday.

Charles Robert Jenkins, 64, a former US Army sergeant, has refused to leave North Korea for a reunion with his wife, Hitomi Soga, 45, in Japan for fear of being handed over to the United States under an extradition treaty for a possible court martial.

Soga was kidnapped by Pyongyang in the 1970s and repatriated in 2002 after a visit to North Korea by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. The couple's two daughters remain with Jenkins.

The Japanese government is reportedly trying to arrange a meeting between Soga and her family in a third country, and an Asian diplomat here has suggested that Malaysia is ideal because it has diplomatic ties with North Korea but no extradition treaty with the United States.

Contacted by AFP , a Malaysian foreign ministry said on condition of anonymity: "Our position is that we will allow for a meeting. Malaysia can be a venue."

Link between Japan, N Korea

Malaysia has in the past served as a link between Japan and North Korea, hosting talks in October 2002 on Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

Koizumi raised Jenkins' plight with US President George W Bush on the sidelines of the annual summit of seven leading wealthy nations and Russia at Sea Island, Georgia this week.

Bush expressed "great sympathy" for Jenkins' wife, but did not agree to drop charges against him, a top US official said.

Koizumi described Soga's plight as well as "the sympathy that the Japanese public feels for Ms Soga," according to the US official, who said Bush "expressed real sympathy for the situation."

But the president also "explained to the prime minister that sergeant Jenkins deserted from the US Army in 1965 and therefore he is still technically in the US army and still wanted on four different charges," the official said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il agreed at his second summit with Koizumi last month to let the five children of two other kidnapped Japanese couples - who returned to Japan with Soga - to join their parents there. - AFP