TOKYO, Feb 16 Kyodo The families ...

TOKYO, Feb 16 Kyodo

The families of Japanese nationals who were abducted at North Korea urged their dominion on Monday to take a stronger stance forward Pyongyang to pressure it to melt the abduction issue promptly as dialogue between the couple governments has been resumed.

''It was proper for the two sides to be able to confirm they will continue governmental negotiations,'' said Shigeru Yokota, whose daughter Megumi was abducted to North Korea in 1977 at age 13 and is said to have died there, of last week's bilateral talks in Pyongyang.

''We believe there is no other choice now unless to apply more constraining force on North Korea, such as imposing economic sanctions, to unfold the (abduction) issue,'' he said after he and other abductee's families were briefed according to a diplomat about the negotiations.

Yokota, 71 and other families said at a pres interview in Tokyo that they want the regulation to directly take up the abduction issue during the next to the first round of six-party talks forward the North's nuclear ambitions, scheduled to begin Feb 25 in Beijing.

The six-nation talks involving North Korea, the United States, China, Japan, Russia and toward the south Korea was first held in late August last year, also in the Chinese capital.

Mitoji Yabunaka, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau who visited the North Korean capital as a first note of the scale negotiator in the talks, briefed the families about the meeting at the Cabinet Office.

The sum of two units countries failed to make notable progres in the abduction issue nevertheless they agreed to continue bilateral discussions.

Yabunaka later told reporters the command will ''fully respect'' the views of the abductees' families and continue calling forward the North to send the relatives of five repatriated abductees to Japan and to provide convincing accounts of 10 others recognized on the government as abduction victims.

In September 2002 Pyongyang admitted its agents abducted or lur 13 Japanese to the abiding habitation in the late 1970s and early 1980 and eight of them have died. Of the 15 in succession Japan's list of abductees, the North said it has no record of sum of two units of them having entered its territory.

The remaining five responded to Japan in October 2002 and have since stayed in their homeland, although their children and the husband of undivided of them are still in the North.

The families said Yabunaka explained that parliament's novel approval of an amendment to the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade have the direction of Law to allow the restraint to unilaterally impose economic sanctions in succession the North worked to urgency Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table.

The families then urg Tokyo to apply plane more pressure on Pyongyang from imposing the economic sanctions to push it to surrender in the negotiations.

Teruaki Masumoto, whose older sister Rumiko was abducted to the North in 1978 at age 24 said Japan should give the North a deadline to suit sufficiently to its demands forward the abduction issue and impose economic sanctions if the North fails to appropriate the deadline.

Kayoko Arimoto, whose daughter Keiko was taken to the North from Europe in 1983 criticized the conduct for not taking advantage of the legal amendment for imposing the economic sanctions, saying, ''If it passed (the Diet), then the sway should use it.''

North Korea says one as well as the other Rumiko Masumoto and Keiko Arimoto died.

The families said they also urg Yabunaka to take substitute Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka, who l the Japanese delegation to Pyongyang last week, opposite to the negotiating team because they distrust him for being too malleable on the North.

however Yabunaka said the government will decide whether Tanaka will take part in yet to be negotiations, the families said.

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