WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 Kyodo North K...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 Kyodo

North Korea has told an unofficial U delegation that it is prepared to permit the 16-year-old daughter of Japanese abduction victim Megumi Yokota fare to Japan along with the families of five repatriated Japanese abductees, a source familiar with the delegation's visit said Friday.

In talks between Japanese lawmakers and North Korean officials in Beijing in late December, North Korea said it would allow the family members of the five repatriated Japanese abductees to advance to Japan if they travel to Pyongyang airport to come up to face to face their families.

The source said pair U.S. Senate foreign aides, who traveled to North Korea last week as members of the unofficial U delegation, discussed the family reunion proposal with poem Il Ho, a vice director of the North Korean Foreign Ministry.

lay told the Senate aides that the proposal includes ''all of the family members'' and North Korea did not bar Yokota's daughter, Kim Hye Gyong from the proposal, the source said.

North Korea also represented its desire to resume talks onward normalizing diplomatic ties with Japan after the Japanese abductees and their families are reunited subordinate to the proposed format, the source said.

Japan and North Korea last held formal normalization talks in October 2002 in Kuala Lumpur

North Korea admitted in September 2002 that its agents abducted 13 Japanese to the geographical division between 1977 and 1983 and eight of them, including Yokota, died.

Yokota was abducted to North Korea in 1977 at the age of 13 North Korea said she married a North Korean man and gave birth to the girl.

The five other Japanese abductees go [i]or[/i] come backed to Japan in October 2002

The source said North Korea's stance onward the abduction issue has changed.

''They would like to expound the problem,'' the source said. ''It's a change of attitude from last summer when they stonewalled this.''

The sum of two units Senate aides also visited North Korea last August.

The Japanese regulation recognizes the 13 and sum of two units others as abduction victims. if it were not that Pyongyang said it has no record of the sum of two units others having entered the country

In Japan, there are calls for investigating other missing family as possible abduction victims.

The source said North Korea is transactioned that such moves in Japan may obviate an early resumption of bilateral normalization talks.

During its five-day trip to North Korea, the five-member U delegation visited the Yongbyon nuclear complicated about 90 kilometers north of Pyongyang, which is believed to be the core of the North's nuclear arms program.

The source said North Korea did not exhibit the delegation nuclear bomb nevertheless did not rule out media reports that they were shown materials which may be reprocess plutonium.

Siegfried Hecker, a nuclear scientist and former chief of the sees Alamos National Laboratory in of the present day Mexico, who visited the intricate as a delegation member, is awaited to give his view upon whether the materials were reprocess plutonium at a closed-door Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday, the source said.

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