JAPAN, N. KOREA TO HOLD FORMAL TALKS ON TIES NEXT WEEK

BEIJING, June 8 Kyodo - Japanese and North Korean envoys agreed Saturday on the need to make progress in improving relations and decided to hold formal talks next week on disputes preventing them from doing so, Japan's delegate said. The working-level talks will take place in Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday between Akitaka Saiki, director general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, and Song Il Ho, North Korea's ambassador for normalization talks with Japan. ''We agreed to meet again next week,'' Saiki told reporters after a two-hour meeting with Song in the Chinese capital, which Japanese officials described as a preparatory meeting for formal negotiations. ''The other side also indicated the notion that there is a need to move forward. We will hold deeper exchanges of views over a longer period next week,'' he said. The two countries last held full-fledged bilateral talks in Ulan Bator in September last year, under the six-party framework aimed at ridding North Korea of nuclear weapons. One of the thorniest topics between the two countries is their dispute over the number of Japanese nationals North Korean agents kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s, and the fates of some of them, including whether they are still alive. Japan has repeatedly demanded that Pyongyang reopen or newly investigate the cases of 12 of the 17 abductees on Japan's official list -- all except the five who returned to Japan in 2002. North Korea has said in the past that it considers the cases closed. ''I repeated our view on this topic, and said it is extremely important to solve this issue for relations to make progress,'' Saiki said. ''I said that in the next Japan-North Korea talks, I hope North Korea will make a decision and deal with this issue in a concrete manner,'' he added. While the United States has promised to remove North Korea from its blacklist of terrorist sponsors as its denuclearization process moves forward, Japan has opposed the move until progress is made on the kidnapping issue. Song gave little away when he arrived at Beijing's international airport in the morning, telling reporters only that the agenda of the meeting was to be decided after Saiki's arrival later in the day. North Korea's top concern is its demand for Japan to make reparations for its 1910 to 1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula. While Japanese government officials indicated earlier that another likely topic was Japan's demand for North Korea to hand over Japanese radicals who hijacked a Japan Airlines plane in 1970, Saiki said that was not discussed in the day's meeting. ''We will have two days next week, so I think we will be able to talk more in detail about issues of mutual interest, including those topics,'' he said. Four of the nine Japanese who hijacked the plane to North Korea and sought asylum there remain in the country. Three others involved in Japan's first hijacking incident have died and two later returned to Japan and were convicted. Tokyo insists the handover should be unconditional. North Korea says that although it will not stand in the way of the hijackers' return, conditions should be worked out between the Japanese government and the hijackers.