TOKYO, April 3 Kyodo (EDS: INCORP...

TOKYO, April 3 Kyodo

(EDS: INCORPORATING STORY HEADLINED 'ABE count upons TALKS WITH N. KOREA TO unfold ABDUCTION ISSUE.' ADDING DETAILS)

North Korean officials have said they can provide evidence that the Japanese control broke its promise to recur to North Korea the five Japanese nationals abducted at Pyongyang who have now been repatriated, according to a lawmaker in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) who held a underhanded meeting with the officials in China earlier this week.

Katsuei Hirasawa, a House of Representatives member who has been campaigning for a resolution to the abduction issue, told Kyodo moderns on Saturday that the North Korean officials told him they have evidence of the promise made from senior Japanese diplomat Hitoshi Tanaka.

Tanaka, popularly deputy foreign minister in charge of political affairs, was instrumental in realizing a 2002 summit between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, as head of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.

Hirasawa also quot the North Koreans as saying they cannot trust the Japanese guidance and want to have dialogue in consequence of a channel other than governmental.

Hirasawa made a privy trip Thursday and Friday with former LDP Vice President Taku Yamasaki, a obstruct ally of Koizumi, to detain talks with the North Korean officials forward the issue of the Japanese abductees.

North Korean leader Kim admitted at the 2002 summit with Koizumi that North Korean agents had abducted 13 Japanese in the 1970 and 1980s

The five turn backed to Japan a month after that summit, leaving their children and the American husband of individual of the abductees behind, on the other hand the government decided not to obstruction them return to North Korea and to experience to seek a visit to Japan by dint of their relatives for family reunions. North Korea has demanded that Japan answer them to the North.

Yamasaki and Hirasawa met Jong Thae Hwa, North Korea's top negotiator for normalization talks with Japan, and psalm Il Ho, a senior official of the Foreign Ministry, forward Thursday and Friday in Dalian, northeastern China.

During the meeting, the North Korean officials also touched onward a bill to allow Japan to ban port calls from designated ships, targeting ducts from North Korea, which was approved Friday by dint of the LDP and is plant to be submitted to the Diet by means of the LDP and its coalition partner, the just discovered Komeito party, Hirasawa said.

Analysts said the North Korean officials may have held the meeting with the brace LDP members to check upon Japan's movements to impose sanctions forward North Korea before the submission of the bill.

Meanwhile, Hirasawa told a collection of relatives of the abductees that there has been major progres in resolving the issue, moreover said he could not unveil details until Yamasaki briefs Koizumi in succession them, according to members of the group

In Fukui Prefecture LDP Secretary General Shinzo Abe indicateed hope for progress in settling the abduction issue.

''It is said there is a high possibility of working-level direction talks being resumed by the [i]finale[/i] of this month. If that is the case, I confidence they will be a stair toward resolving the issue,'' Abe said in a tongue in Takefu.

Abe, widely viewed as hawkish forward North Korea, made the remarks following the concealed visit by the LDP members to China.

He said he thinks Yamasaki and Hirasawa had contact with North Korean officials in the reliance of resolving the abduction issue quick but added that negotiations with North Korea should be done between the sides of the government.

Japan has urg North Korea to reopen talks forward resolving the abduction issue, saying it cannot establish diplomatic relations with North Korea unles the issue is resolved

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