Efforts to rescue a Japanese hostage in Iraq continued Wednesday with a call from Japan's foreign minister on the abductors to free the young man while the British hostage in Iraq appeared on new video urging withdrawal ofBritish troops from Iraq.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda told a press conferencethat Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura has urged the hostage-takers to free 24-year-old Shosei Koda.

"The government is taking the kidnappers' 48-hour deadline seriously as a problem that requires an urgent response," Hosoda said in an interview with the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television.

Senior Vice Foreign Minister Shuzen Tanigawa and an emergency police counterterrorism team have left for the Jordanian capital Amman.

Koda is believed to be kidnapped by an al-Qaida-linked group, which threatened to behead him within 48 hours unless Japan withdraws the Self-Defense Forces troops from Iraq.

"The Self-Defense Forces will not withdraw," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was quoted by Kyodo News as saying. "I cannot allow terrorism to prevail and cannot bow to terrorism."

The United States said it is supporting and coordinating with Japan over rescuing Koda. "We want to make sure we are very careful about doing everything we can to see that this man is released safely," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at a news briefing.

Meanwhile, British hostage Margaret Hassan, chief of the CARE international charity in Baghdad kidnapped by unknown abductors onOct. 19, urged Britain to withdraw troops from Iraq in a new videofootage aired by al-Jazeera.

Hassan was standing in a dimly lit room with a wall as the background, but she could not be heard speaking. Hassan "issued an appeal to Britons to urge Prime Minister TonyBlair to withdraw his troops from Iraq and not re-deploy them in Baghdad," al-Jazeera said, adding Hassan also asked the British government to "release Iraqi women prisoners."

Source: Xinhua