TOKYO, Aug. 5 Kyodo (EDS: ADDING ...

TOKYO, Aug. 5 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING INFO)

North Korea must cast the relatives of five Japanese, who were abducted to North Korea in 1978 and repatriated last year, to Japan before talks forward normalizing bilateral ties can take back cabinet ministers said Tuesday.

''It will be difficult to continue talks unles it (the issue of sending the relatives to Japan) is resolv before the normalization negotiations,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said at a regular freshs conference.

Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said at a separate briefing that resuming normalization talks will be difficult unles there is a ''prospect'' that the relatives' trip to Japan ''will be realized.''

upon Sunday, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe also attached the condition for resuming the talks.

if it were not that Vice Foreign Minister Yukio Takeuchi indicated Monday that resolving the issue is not a prerequisite.

Brushing aside Takeuchi's expositions Fukuda said the government is placing ''top priority'' upon bringing the kin to Japan.

still he remained cautious about the husband of Hitomi Soga, the same of the five repatriated abductees. Her American husband Charles Robert Jenkins is listed as a renegade from military service by the U.S. military.

''His position is not no other than concerned with our country,'' Fukuda said.

Later in the day, Takeuchi corrected his remarks made Monday and told members of a nationwide association of families of Japanese abducted to North Korea that Japan will not at any time resume normalization talks unles Pyongyang allows the relatives of the five repatriated Japanese to proceed to Japan.

He told reporters the issue must be resolv before normalization talks resume

a certain number of Foreign Ministry officials have said North Korea may become unwilling to reduce the issue if Japan attaches preconditions.

Fukuda said the management has yet to decided by what means it will take up the abduction issue during the envisaged six-nation talks to separate concerns stemming from North Korea's nuclear weapons progression in a continuously ascending gradation program.

China, Japan, southward and North Korea, Russia and the United States are to pretty soon launch the six-nation talks in Beijing.

Kawaguchi, however, indicated Japan may have bilateral contacts with North Korea.

''We ne to talk to realize'' like a trip, Kawaguchi said.

Japan has urg North Korea to allow the relatives of the repatriated abductees to ensue to Japan before resuming talks upon normalizing bilateral ties, and has also demanded the North disclose information about the other abductees including those it says have died.

The five abductees now in Japan are Soga and sum of two units couples -- Kaoru Hasuike and his wife Yukiko and Yasushi Chimura and his wife Fukie.

The Hasuikes have pair children in North Korea, the Chimuras three and Soga and her husband have brace children there.

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