TOKYO, Oct. 30 (Xinhuanet) -- A body inspected Saturday to determined whether it is that of the Japanese hostage was not the one found early, a senior Japanese official said.

    "Its features are entirely different" from the one described by the US military, Kyodo News quoted Senior Vice Foreign Minister Shuzen Tanigawa as saying in Amman, Jordan where he is in charge of handling the crisis.

    Earlier, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said the body had been confirmed not to be that of the Japanese hostage Shosei Koda, citing some discrepancies in physical features.

    The US military found the body on Friday in Balad, between Tikrit and Baghdad, and told the Japanese side that the body bore characteristics of Koda, the Foreign Ministry said. The body was later airlifted to Kuwait for identification.

    Koda appeared Tuesday on a video footage shown on a website reportedly run by the al-Qaeda terrorist network. The kidnappers gave a 48-hour deadline to the Japanese government to pull its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) out of Iraq, or the hostage will be decapitated. Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro had firmly rejected the demand.Enditem