Issue of abductees causing friction between Asian rivals

North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens decades ago took center stage at the opening of talks in Beijing yesterday between the former bitter enemies.

The meetings are expected to last at least two days, they are the first comprehensive talks between Japan and North Korea since October three years ago, when the two sides met in Kuala Lumpur.

"Both sides stated their views on issues of concern seriously," Japanese chief delegate Akitaka Saiki said after the morning session.

North Korea has admitted abducting 13 people in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies. Five of them have returned to Japan with their children, and Pyongyang says the other eight are dead.

The feud over the kidnappings, the main obstacle to better ties, intensified after DNA tests showed that bones handed over to Japanese diplomats a year ago were not those of Japanese abductees, as Pyongyang had claimed.

"We have already made our position clear on the DNA analysis and I want to ask various questions on this," North Korean negotiator Song Il-ho told reporters.

Song that North Korea would also raise the issue of reparations in respect of Japan's often brutal colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

Japan South Korea US$500 million when the two countries normalized ties in 1965, and some analysts have said Tokyo could provide up to US$10 billion to the impoverished North.

Japanese Minister Junichiro Koizumi said on Wednesday that North Korea had yet to give a satisfactory reply on the abduction issue or on the isolated state's nuclear program, the subject of six-party talks, including Japan, due to resume in Beijing next week.

"We have asked the North Koreans for a sincere response on the abduction and nuclear issues, but such a situation has not come about," Koizumi told reporters in Tokyo.

The Beijing talks between foreign ministry officials from the two countries come after North Korea agreed in principle in September to dismantle its nuclear arms programs in exchange for aid and better ties with Washington and Tokyo.

Pyongyang yesterday through its official Korean Central News Agency it was sending back to Japan a Japanese woman who it said had defected to North Korea via China in August 2003.

"From a humanitarian point of view, the DPRK took a measure of sending her back to Japan on Nov. 3," the agency said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"Before her departure for home, she deeply reflected on her illegal intrusion into the DPRK border and apologized for it and thanked its government for its warm treatment and lenient measures," the agency said.

An at Japan's Foreign Ministry said he had no comment to make on the case, adding that the ministry had not heard from the woman or confirmed her return.