Washington, April 30, SPA -- President George W. Bush is “greatly concerned” about the humanitarian situation in North Korea, the White House said yesterday, calling for global action to halt rights abuses in the isolated Stalinist state. The statement came ahead of a meeting between Bush and relatives of Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. The meeting apparently was an effort to highlight rights abuses and illegal activities in North Korea. “The president is greatly concerned about the humanitarian situation in North Korea,” spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. He described North Korea as “one of the world’s worst human rights violators,” and said the international community “should be paying attention to” the rights situation in the reclusive country. “It is hard to believe that a country would foster abduction,” Bush said after meeting at the White House with a North Korean defector and family members of Japanese abducted by North Korea. “If North Korea expects to be respected in the world, that country must respect human rights and human dignity and must allow” Japanese families to be reunited.Non-governmental organizations have accused North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il’s regime of wide-ranging abuses, including deliberate starvation, abduction, family separations, religious persecution, trafficking of women and children, inhumane prison conditions, and the use of gas chambers. The rights abuses and food shortages have led to an exodus of North Korean refugees to bordering countries, especially China, which had been accused for forced repatriation, the groups charged. Jay Lefkowitz, Bush’s special envoy for human rights in North Korea, has said that the United States would soon begin accepting North Korean refugees. --SPA 1352 Local Time 1052 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/357292