Japan said yesterday it would try to confirm reports that North Korea had offered to send to Japan unconditionally the children of Japanese nationals its agents abducted decades ago.
Kyodo news agency and other domestic media quoted a Japanese ruling party heavyweight, who held secret talks with North Korean officials in China last week, as saying Pyongyang had dropped its hardline stance on the abduction issue.
"North Korea said it can send the eight family members of the abductees unconditionally," Taku Yamasaki, a former deputy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was quoted as telling Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi late on Wednesday night.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said the government would try to confirm the reports, which he said were "fragmented".
"The news reports are fragmented to a large extent ... We would like to try to confirm all the details," he said.
Five Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s came home in October, 2002, after a historic summit between the leaders of the two countries.
But during their years in North Korea all five had married and had children, and they left those family members behind when they returned to Japan.
North Korea had persistently insisted that the five were supposed to have gone back to Pyongyang.
Japan insists the seven children born and raised in North Korea -- now in their teens and 20s -- be allowed to join their parents and wants more information on eight other abductees Pyongyang says died of illness, accident or suicide.
Tokyo also wants Charles Jenkins, a US soldier said by Washington to have defected to the North and who is married to one of the abductees, to be allowed to rejoin his wife.
LDP lawmaker Katsuei Hirasawa joined Yamasaki in secret meetings with North Korean officials in Dalian, northeastern China, last week.
After coming back from China, Hirasawa has repeatedly said their talks with the North Koreans would bear fruit in the near future.
Japanese media said the North Koreans gave the Japanese politicians a message in which their leader Kim Jong-il had expressed his willingness to resolve North Korea's abduction, missile and nuclear issues and normalize diplomatic ties with Tokyo while Koizumi was in office.
Japan has repeatedly said it wants Pyongyang to resolve the abduction issue, abandon its nuclear arms programs and halt its ballistic missile development. Talks on establishing diplomatic relations have stalled over these problems.
If the abduction issue is resolved soon, it will mark a huge diplomatic victory for Koizumi. If it is settled before Upper House elections in mid-July, Koizumi could lead his party to a landslide win in the national contest, analysts say.
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