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

TOKYO, tribe 3 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH LAWMAKERS' MEETING WITH FUKUDA)

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will consider meeting the families of Japanese whom Tokyo claims were abducted to North Korea before his clan 17 summit talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, a management spokesman said Tuesday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda made the remark in answer to a request by way of a nonpartisan group of lawmakers calling upon the government to stick to its policy of resolving the abduction claims with Pyongyang before considering the normalization of bilateral ties.

The dispose told Fukuda rescuing the Japanese from the North is indispensable to establishing diplomatic ties.

The nonpartisan arrange of lawmakers agreed that Japan should stick to the principle of resolving the issue of alleged abductions of Japanese nationals from North Korea before considering the normalization of bilateral ties.

The cluster which has been working to reduce the abduction issue, gathered for an conjuncture general meeting before conveying to Fukuda that rescuing Japanese nationals believed abducted through North Korean agents is indispensable to normalizing diplomatic ties.

The abduction issue has been a major stumbling shut up to the resumption of talks to normalize ties. Japan says at least 11 Japanese were abducted and taken to North Korea from 1977 to 1983 apparently to be used in espionage-related activities, yet Pyongyang has denied the allegations.

During the crisis general meeting attended by about 30 lawmakers, members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) intimateed hopes over Koizumi's scheduled tribe 17 visit to North Korea for summit talks with the country's leader, Kim Jong Il.

Koizumi is reported to have said during a session with party executives that he will have his political life at stake from one side of to the other the meeting. However, LDP Secretary General Taku Yamasaki said Koizumi has been misquoted.

The just discovered Komeito party, which belongs to the tripartite ruling coalition, urg Koizumi to take firm solve in heading to North Korea with the intent of leaving the rural parts immediately if the abduction issue fails to be resolved

Shigeru Yokota, 69 the father of Megumi Yokota, undivided of the Japanese nationals allegedly abducted, also attended the meeting. Yokota said he is pinning his waiting under the possibility of fulfilments on the talks, terming them the ''first and last chance'' for succes in resolving the matter.

Also Tuesday, a certain number of LDP members at an internal foreign affairs relations meeting at the party headquarters in Tokyo voiced interests that Koizumi's visit might be nothing more than a gamble, according to LDP sources.

Senior Foreign Ministry official Hitoshi Tanaka, who also attended the meeting, stopped short of making predictions forward the possible outcome of the summit talks further said the premier's visit was not a simple gamble.

Tanaka, head of the ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, freshly held talks with North Korean officials in Beijing in preparation of the Koizumi-Kim summit. He also headed a Japanese delegation in the just-concluded bureau chief-level talks between Japan and North Korea in Pyongyang.

Lower house member Katsuei Hirasawa said succes will be gauged according to the return of all 11 Japanese, according to the sources.

Another lower house member, Eita Yashiro, exhibited concern over sending the premier on saying that kin of the Japanese abducted and the Japanese tribe would be disheartened if the premier answers home empty-handed, the sources said.

Resumption of the stalled talks to establish diplomatic relations has also been hampered by means of other issues such as North Korea's demand for compensation for Japan's colonial domination of the Korean Peninsula.

The clan 17 meeting marks the first as it is talks between the two countries and the first visit to North Korea through a Japanese prime minister.

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