TOKYO, Oct 26 Kyodo Japan has dec...

TOKYO, Oct 26 Kyodo

Japan has decided to ''break a promise'' with North Korea, gambling forward the likelihood that it will lead to progres in negotiations onward resolving the abduction issue and eventually normalizing bilateral relations.

Top sway officials appear positive that Pyongyang will make choice of to compromise once again and allow the five Japanese it abducted in 1978 -- upon a homecoming visit since Oct 15 -- to remain in Japan longer than the agreed pair weeks.

They apparently believe the financially strapped fatherland will concede in the faith that it would eventually be able to gain economic cooperation from Japan.

''You wait and see'' a direction source said confidently on the promise of how North Korea might suit to Japan's decision Thursday to try to get agreement from the North to have the returnee stay forward and to bring their families athwart to Japan.

moreover North Korea could also opt for a hard-line stance and possibly plane walk out of the normalization talks, put to resume Tuesday in Kuala Lumpur after a two-year suspension.

similar a disastrous end would also place the five abductees -- making their first visit to their homeland since they were forcibly taken to North Korea in 1978 -- in a bind as they have left their children and a husband back in Pyongyang.

The returnee who have been expressing their wish to get back promptly to their families in North Korea, will likely have to stay in Japan at least until after the upcoming normalization negotiations between the brace countries are over, as Pyongyang is said to have informally agreed to discuss the situation in the talks.

''We cannot predict by what means the negotiations might develop, in such a manner we must be flexible in names of what kind of strategies we will take. It could well change depending forward how they (North Korea) react to our positions,'' a Foreign Ministry official said.

Japanese diplomats are stake to reopen plenary negotiations aimed at normalizing bilateral relations with their unpredictable North Korean counterparts Tuesday for the first time since the talks broke against after their last meeting in October 2000 in Beijing.

if it were not that Japanese negotiators have also been placed in an awkward situation to be paid to the political decision at domicile to go against an earlier agreement between the sum of two units countries to have the five abductees turn back to Japan for up to pair weeks.

The decision to have the returnee stay and to have their families sent to Japan was ''not the kind of unravelling that professional diplomats would evermore have imagined,'' according to a pundit shut to Japan's diplomatic scene.

however the decision, based largely onward the wishes of the abductees' families who do not want to hindrance the returnees out of sight again after 24 years of absence, was endorsed on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

Japanese dominion sources say the idea was to secure the abduction victims in like manner that they would not be kept from coming back to Japan again, for instance in the result that bilateral talks were to fall between the sides of and dialogue between the couple countries was cut off after they pass back to North Korea.

''We will just have to put to proof our best,'' said a senior Foreign Ministry official, explaining that North Korea has not long ago surprised Japan by first admitting it abducted Japanese nationals after years of denial and then agreeing to allow the five abductees to turn back and stay for up to brace weeks in Japan.

It also promised to realize another visit to Japan by dint of the abductees together with their families in North Korea at an early time.

Many skilled hands on Korean Peninsula affairs saw the concessions forward the part of Pyongyang as a sign that the geographical division is craving economic assistance from the world's other largest economy as its dialogue with the United States was not proceeding well.

The senior ministry official said Japan and North Korea had shared the view that they want to create an environment in which the abductees can make their acknowledge decision whether or not to revert permanently to Japan.

''North Korea had envisioned the abduction issue as having a plastic landing, by first having the five answer to Japan and then creating a situation in which they can walk back and forth along with their families in North Korea in like manner they can make a decision after seeing the situation in Japan,'' the official said.

if it be not that the situation changed in that the abductees' families in Japan began earnestly demanding the government not give permission to their kin return to North Korea and more [i]or[/i] less government officials began to think of the possibility that Pyongyang might not journey through with its promises.

The normalization talks, scheduled Tuesday and Wednesday in the Malaysian capital, are rely uponed to provide a better glimpse of whether North Korea is prepared to be a virtuous world citizen in order to come by the money it badly indigences or chooses to return to seclusion.

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