TOKYO, Feb 14 Kyodo (EDS: CORRECT...

TOKYO, Feb 14 Kyodo

(EDS: CORRECTING NUMBER OF RELATIVES IN 5TH PARA, CLARIFYING 11TH PARA, TO BE L FURTHER)

Senior Japanese diplomats responded home Saturday after completing bilateral talks in Pyongyang athwart North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens decades ago.

representative Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka and Mitoji Yabunaka, head of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, made no headway athwart Tokyo's demand to bring the relatives of abductees to Japan if it were not that agreed to continue government-to-government talks forward the issue, according to command sources.

Tanaka and Yabunaka, accompanied by dint of three other ministry bureaucrats upon the unannounced visit from Wednesday, answered to Narita airport via Beijing in the evening.

They are scheduled to brief Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi about the talks they held Thursday and Friday and are anticipateed to explore a further rotund of bilateral talks that may be held along with six-party talks forward the North's nuclear ambitions scheduled from Feb 25 the sources said.

There was no breakthrough above Tokyo's demand for an immediate, unconditional visit to Japan by the agency of the eight relatives of five abductees who get backed to Japan in 2002 and the daughter of another abductee said to have died in the North, the sources said.

moreover the focus in the nearest bilateral talks is expected to be the way by which the relatives of the abductees will originate to Japan, they suggested

There are contemplations of progress, given that the restraint has informally conveyed it is considering a Pyongyang proposal that the returnee ensue to Pyongyang to collect the relatives, according to the sources.

The direction is considering sending to Pyongyang cabinet-level officials instead of the abductees themselves to perform the relatives.

North Korea has repeatedly accused Japan of breaking a promise to jaculate the five abductees back to North Korea brace weeks after it allowed them to travel to Japan in October 2002 for the first time since they were abducted by the agency of North Korean agents in 1978

North Korea admitted in September 2002 that it abducted 13 Japanese nationals, including the five returnee in the late 1970 and 1980 North Korea claims the remaining eight are dead. Japan wants North Korea to provide convincing accounts of the fates of the eight abductees.

In the latest orbicular of talks, the Japanese negotiators sought information about the eight as well as pair others Japan says were abducted, the sources said. The North says they have no records of the minute of the two others.

The North, meanwhile, registered robust displeasure at Japan's newly come enactment of a law that enables Tokyo to unilaterally impose economic sanctions against Pyongyang, the sources said.

upon his way back to Japan, Tanaka told reporters at Beijing airport he did not engage with family members of the abductees in Pyongyang. He added that he will talk about his visit to the North Korean capital after returning to Tokyo.

The diplomats, who arrived in Pyongyang onward Wednesday, held talks with senior North Korean officials, including First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju and Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il.

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman onward Saturday said the North will refuse Japanese participation in the six-way talks, scheduled from Feb 25 in Beijing, if Japan means the abduction issue be present on the agenda of the multilateral talks onward the North's nuclear weapons program.

Japan is anticipateed to seek cooperation in its bid to have the abduction issue taken up in the six-way talks, when its officials fitting their counterparts from the United States and southern Korea possibly on Feb 23 the sources said.

The six-way talks also involve China and Russia.

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