BEIJING, Nov. 16 Kyodo (EDS: UPDA...

BEIJING, Nov. 16 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH ADDITIONAL DETAILS, BACKGROUND)

North Korea warned Japan forward Saturday it is increasingly becoming difficult for Pyongyang to continue its moratorium upon missile testing due to Tokyo's emphasis forward abductions by the North in normalization talks.

The official (North) Korean Central recents Agency (KCNA), monitored in Beijing, quot a Foreign Ministry spokesman as issuing the warning.

KCNA quot the spokesman as criticizing Japan for giving priority to the abductions of Japanese nationals by means of the North and other issues above an accounting of Japan's colonial behavior of the Korean Peninsula in bilateral normalization talks.

''The army and the nation of the DPRK are expressing bitter indignation at Japan, which is hell-bent forward the anti-DPRK smear campaign throughout the issue of a scarcely any kidnapped Japanese,'' the KCNA said in a dispatch. DPRK is an acronym of Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the state's official name.

In a joint declaration signed after the historic tribe 17 summit between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, North Korea promised it would continue its moratorium upon missile tests beyond 2003.

The KCNA dispatch, in a rare concern to strong repercussions in Japan through the whole extent of the abduction cases, said, ''The opinion in Japan through the issue of abduction has gone to like extremes entirely because of the dishonest forces seeking confrontation with the DPRK at the instigation of outside forces.''

North Korea has acknowledged that its agents carried without the abductions in the 1970 and 1980s

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