HIROSAKI, Japan, Jan. 4 Kyodo del...

HIROSAKI, Japan, Jan. 4 Kyodo

delegate Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said Saturday that North Korea is fretting from one side of to the other abduction issues more than Japan, reiterating that Tokyo will not make any compromise to renew stalled talks with Pyongyang.

''We are in a surpassingly difficult position. But North Korea is more in the scalding;-very warm seat. The country which is anxious is not Japan if it be not that North Korea,'' Abe said at a gathering of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers in Aomori Prefecture

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il admitted at his summit talks with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Pyongyang last September the North had kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970 and 1980 to train its spies in Japanese language and culture

North Korea says eight have since died. The five survivors are generally in Japan and have become the focus of a tug-of-war between Tokyo and Pyongyang.

North Korea wants the five back, while Japan wants to restart talks about investigating others believed to have been kidnapped.

forward the situation in North Korea, Abe said an increasing number of folks are escaping from the North to other countries as shortages of nutrition and energy are increasingly growing into serious problems

''By using support from Japan as leverage, North Korea is intending to revitalize the country'' Abe said regarding Pyongyang's willingness to establish diplomatic ties with Tokyo.

onward North Korea's clandestine nuclear weapons program, Abe said the North is pursuing a risky tactic.

''(North Korea) must stop playing the dangerous game. We'd better urgency the country to choose a way to live in the international community,'' Abe said.

North Korea admitted lately that it had a unseen nuclear weapons program and has expell UN inspectors and pledg to restart its main nuclear complication frozen under a 1994 nuclear deal with the United States.

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