The court martial of US Army Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins, who last month surrendered to US military authorities in Japan to face charges that he deserted to North Korea four decades ago, is scheduled to begin in November.
The trial could lead to the resolution of a diplomatic dilemma for the United States and its close ally Japan, which has asked for leniency out of consideration for Jenkins' Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga.
Expectations have been mounting for a plea bargain deal in which Jenkins, 64, pleads guilty to one or more charges and offers to tell what he knows about North Korea in return for punishment lighter than the maximum of life in prison.
US President George W. Bush has been said to be reluctant to give Jenkins special treatment while American troops are fighting in Iraq and ahead of the Nov 2. presidential election.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, however, has spent considerable political capital by backing the US-led war in Iraq and sending non-combat troops there on a risky mission to help rebuild the country.
Jenkins and Soga met and married in North Korea after she was kidnapped and taken there by Pyongyang's agents in 1978 to help train its spies in Japanese language and culture.
Jenkins and his family have been living at Camp Zama, the US Army's headquarters in Japan, since he gave himself up last month to face charges that he deserted to communist North Korea in 1965 while on patrol in South Korea.
Sympathy runs high in Japan for Soga, a shy but poised and poetic woman who was allowed to return to Japan two years ago along with four other Japanese abducted to North Korea.