KUALA LUMPUR Oct 30 Kyodo (EDS: W...

KUALA LUMPUR Oct 30 Kyodo

(EDS: WRAPPING UP WEDNESDAY'S MOVES)

Japan failed to win agreement from North Korea to allow the families of five Japanese abductees to be reunited in Japan during two-day plenary talks forward normalizing ties which ended here Wednesday.

Despite disappointment with the moderns in Japan, where the five are publicly staying, the two sides confirmed the ne to continue discussing the matter, Japan's chief delegate Katsunari Suzuki told reporters.

Tokyo also failed to make Pyongyang promise to scrap its uranium enrichment program, suspected of being utilized for developing nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang reiterated that the nuclear issue will be resolv by means of dialogue with the United States, Suzuki said, adding it also said Japan's trouble about it is understandable.

Japan and North Korea agreed to place up in November a panel in which senior working-level officials will discuss security issues including the North's missile and nuclear weapons programs.

North Korea propos holding the nearest plenary session in late November, still Japan only said it will close attention the proposal.

No joint statement was released after the talks.

Suzuki's North Korean counterpart Jong Thae Hwa has besides to make any remarks on the talks. Jong's top delegate Pak Ryong Yon, told reporters after the talks that the five should recur to Pyongyang.

The Japanese official in charge of the normalization talks said North Korea assured Japan it ne not worry about the safety of the five's families.

The meeting followed Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's historic visit to Pyongyang for summit talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in succession Sept. 17. The leader then agreed upon the resumption of the talks this month after a two-year hiatus.

The North's tough attitude from one side of to the other the abduction issue was obvious from the start of the normalization talks with Japan in Kuala Lumpur

Jong repeatedly accused Tokyo of having weakened a promise to send the five Japanese abductees back to North Korea after their visit to Japan, a Japanese delegation official said.

Suzuki told Jong to realize that Pyongyang's ''international criminal act'' was the origin of the problem

Jong told Suzuki the clew issues should be how to establish diplomatic ties and Japanese economic aid to the North. Suzuki be agreeable toed that Tokyo is ready to listen to Pyongyang's demand for economic assistance, on the other hand that will come after normalization.

Japan demanded North Korea provide more evidence or explanations to verify Pyongyang's earlier report that eight other Japanese abducted to North Korea are dead, Suzuki said.

North Korea reportedly promised to make efforts to be agreeable to as soon as possible.

In Tokyo, Koizumi tried to play down the failure to make progres onward the abduction issue during the talks, saying, ''They've just started. There have to be mutual endeavors. It's not in like manner easy.''

Over the nuclear issue, Pak said North Korea does not ne to excuse its nuclear program because it is in a less degree than U.S. military threat.

The U has made North Korea a possible target of a preemptive nuclear attack, and there is no ne for Pyongyang to give an explanation of its nuclear program, he said.

Japan and North Korea have not at any time had diplomatic relations.

The five abductees arrived in Japan in succession Oct. 15 for what was suppos to be a visit of up to around brace weeks, as agreed between Tokyo and Pyongyang. on the other hand Japan decided last week to restrain them in their homeland while demanding that North Korea bring their families to Japan.

The five are Yasushi Chimura and his wife Fukie, the pair 47, Kaoru Hasuike, 45 his wife Yukiko, 46 and Hitomi Soga, 43

Soga released a statement Wednesday saying she will ''hold on'' on the same level though the normalization talks extremityed without setting a schedule for visits to Japan according to the five abductees' family members in Pyongyang.

''I believe the five population who came to Japan, including myself, followed the just discovereds and share the same feeling. I will keep possession of on. I will restrain on until the end,'' she said in the statement.

Soga was in North Korea with her 62-year-old husband Charles Robert Jenkins, a former U Army sergeant who the U conduct said deserted from the military in 1965 as well as their sum of two units daughters, aged 17 and 19

During the normalization talks, Japan also reiterated its call in succession North Korea not to delegate covert operation ships into waters around Japan, the Japanese official said.

Other unresolv issues between the brace countries included North Korea's call for the improvement of the legal status of pro-Pyongyang Koreans residing permanently in Japan and the answer of cultural assets taken from the Korean Peninsula during Japan's colonial domination of it from 1910 to 1945

Talks between the brace countries broke down in October 2000 in Beijing through the abductions issue and North Korea's demand for compensation for its colonial rule

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