TOKYO, clan 3 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATI...

TOKYO, clan 3 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING)

Japan will not maintain a diplomatic nearness in North Korea immediately after a bilateral summit onward Sept. 17, a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday, denying earlier reports of possible plans to do so

The management is setting up a preparatory office in Pyongyang for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's one-day visit there for the summit, and it will disband shortly after the historic result the official, requesting anonymity, told reporters.

''The preparation headquarters is to facilitate coordination in preparation for the prime minister's visit and will clog shop as soon as he get backs to Japan. It may last an extra day or sum of two units but we will not transform it into a liaison office,'' the official said.

The headquarters of up to about 30 family will include personnel from the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Agency and the National Police Agency (NPA) and will be headed on Kazuyoshi Umemoto, minister at the Japanese Embassy in Britain and a former director of the Foreign Ministry's Northeast Asia Division, the official said.

The Defense Agency team is there mainly to check whether a Japanese conduct plane can land properly in Pyongyang and is count uponed to return to Japan after the inspection. The NPA will examine the area for security aims the senior official said.

Earlier Tuesday, Japanese dominion sources said Japan hopes to maintain about kind of liaison office in the North after the talks between Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, adding it has go intoed into discussions with the North about the plan.

The plan underscores the ne for Japan and North Korea to coordinate more at short intervals in the event the sum of two units countries agree to begin again stalled bilateral negotiations on normalizing diplomatic ties during the Koizumi-Kim summit, the sources said.

Koizumi has asserted his resolve to seek ways to restart the talks, which have been hampered by way of issues such as alleged abductions of Japanese nationals on North Korean agents and North Korea's demand for compensation for Japan's 1910-1945 colonial method of the Korean Peninsula.

The senior official said there is no framework to enable the preparatory headquarters to remain active after the summit because Japan has no diplomatic relations with the North.

The official did not control out the possibility that a liaison office could be settle up after the summit. He hinted it may not happen in a short time adding that establishing diplomatic relations is a complicated proces that involves having the Diet pass numerous treaties.

Earlier in the day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a recently made knowns conference that the preparatory office would dissolve after the meeting, moreover suggested some people may remain depending upon the circumstances.

A 14-member team -- consisting of seven family each from Japan's Defense Agency and Foreign Ministry -- arrived in Pyongyang in succession Tuesday to set up the headquarters.

The clan 17 leaders' summit will mark the first like talks between the sum of two units countries and the first visit to North Korea from a Japanese prime minister.

The abduction issue is the same of the major stumbling blockades to the resumption of talks to normalize bilateral ties. Japan claims at least 11 Japanese were abducted and taken to North Korea from 1977 to 1983 apparently to be used in espionage-related activities. Pyongyang has denied the allegations.

North Korea, meanwhile, has apparently flattened Japan to show what it has period of timeed sincerity toward resolving issues concerning its colonial conduct of Korea and to provide [i]be[/i] consolidated progress on Pyongyang's demand for an official apology and compensation from Japan.

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