By contrast, the Japanese government and a wide segment of the public want to see an aging and ailing Jenkins reunited permanently with his wife, a Japanese citizen, and their two daughters, and allowed to live out his life peaceably.

Jenkins' nieces and nephews in North Carolina, who have heard little from him for 40 years, assert online (www.charlesrobertjenkins.org) that Jenkins is a prisoner of war who has been abandoned. "We believe that the U.S. Army deserted my uncle," says an entry on the Web site.

And from all appearances, North Korea, South Korea, China and Indonesia want the problem to go away and not interfere with larger issues, notably negotiations intended to defuse North Koreas aspirations for nuclear arms.

This convoluted tale begins in South Korea in 1965, when Jenkins disappeared while on a patrol in the Demilitarized Zone that separates South Korea from North Korea. Shortly after, he turned up in Pyongyang.

In 1978, North Korean agents kidnapped Hitomi Soga and her mother near their home in northwestern Japan and took her to Pyongyang, where Soga, now 45, met Jenkins, whose age is variously given as 62, 64 and 65. They married in 1980 and had daughters Mika, now 21, and Belinda, 18.

Not much was heard from the couple until Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited North Korea in 2002 and brought back Soga and four other kidnapped Japanese. Since then, Soga has been pleading with Japan, the United States and North Korea to allow her husband and daughters to join her.

Through Indonesian mediators, the family was reunited in Jakarta on July 9 and are headed to Japan, where Jenkins plans to seek medical treatment.

Soga had declined to meet her husband earlier in China because she feared undue North Korean influence.

The question is when the United States will take custody of Jenkins under the Status of Forces Agreement that sets conditions under which U.S. troops are stationed in Japan. It applies to Jenkins because desertion has no statute of limitations, and he is still considered to be under military jurisdiction.

Besides desertion and aiding the enemy, both punishable by death, Jenkins has been charged with urging two other soldiers to desert, and two instances of encouraging disloyalty.

His family in North Carolina have asked that the charges be dropped.

In a letter to President Bush, niece Susan Cutting wrote: "It is very hard to believe in our system of government when men like Richard Nixon get pardoned for their crimes and men like Bill Clinton commit perjury and do not get impeached." (Actually, Clinton was impeached, but he was not convicted of any crime.)

"Vietnam War deserters and draft dodgers got pardons and I believe my uncle should also," Cutting wrote. "He is an old man; much older from the pictures than his 62 years. If, in fact, he is a deserter and defector, I believe he has paid enough for his crimes."

After President Bush met Koizumi in Georgia in June, an administration official said the president had expressed "an understanding of why the Japanese public and why the prime minister want to do everything they can to help find a humanitarian answer to this real puzzle."

The president pointed out that the charges against Jenkins are serious.

Jenkins supporters have urged that he be allowed to tell his story. The best place for that would be a court-martial, which demands evidence and the right to cross-examine. Jenkins would be considered innocent unless proven guilty, and the burden of proof would be on the government.

Knowledgeable military officers have suggested that Jenkins could be offered an administrative hearing before a senior officer, which could result in something like a dishonorable discharge without jail time.

Army authorities also want an opportunity to question Jenkins about Americans thought to be deserters in North Korea and seek other intelligence.

What other American has spent the last 40 years in North Korea?