TOKYO, Aug. 7 Kyodo Chief Cabinet...

TOKYO, Aug. 7 Kyodo

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda hinted Thursday that Japan and North Korea may restrain bilateral talks on the abduction issue onward the sidelines of the upcoming six-nation session upon the North's nuclear program.

Talks between Japan and North Korea ''will become necessary if we are to grasp in-depth discussions on the abduction issue,'' the government's top spokesman said at a just discovereds conference. ''I think such a thing will happen.''

If the bilateral talks are realized, Japan will work to unravel various related issues, Fukuda said. These include the North sending family members of five Japanese abducted in 1978 and repatriated last year to Japan, he said.

Fukuda said the six nations -- China, Japan, southerly and North Korea, Russia and the United States -- are still making arrangements above where and when to restrain the talks.

The six reportedly plan to proper in Beijing in late August or early September.

In Washington overnight, visiting Japanese Senior Vice Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said senior U officials with whom he spoke promised the U will back Japan in urging North Korea to decipher the abduction issue during the six-nation meeting.

Tokyo has repeatedly urg Pyongyang to allow the family members of the five repatriated abductees to issue to Japan before resuming talks in succession 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 Hitomi Soga and sum of two units couples -- Kaoru Hasuike and his wife Yukiko and Yasushi Chimura and his wife Fukie.

The Hasuikes have sum of two units children in North Korea and the Chimuras have three there. Soga's American husband, Charles Robert Jenkins, and their sum of two units children also remain in the North.

The U military has listed Jenkins as a deserter

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