Japan to lift some sanctions on North Korea

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan said on Friday it will lift some sanctions on North Korea including a ban on charter flights and travel after Pyongyang agreed to reinvestigate the fate of Japanese citizens abducted decades ago.

Talks on establishing diplomatic ties between the two wary neighbors have been blocked by the dispute over Japanese snatched by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s to help train North Korean spies in language and customs.

The issue is a highly emotive one in Japan.

North Korea also agreed in talks this week in Beijing to cooperate in handing over a Japanese radical who took part in hijacking a Japan Airlines plane in 1970, forcing the airliner to land in Pyongyang, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said.

"With these promises ... the process of resolving the abduction issue has resumed, and the government would like to have active talks with North Korea in order to achieve a comprehensive solution to the issues of the abductions and its nuclear and missile programs," he told a news conference.

North Korea's official KCNA news agency also said Pyongyang would reinvestigate the abduction issue.

Tokyo first imposed sanctions including a ban on imports and port calls by North Korean ships in October 2006 after North Korea conducted a nuclear test and test-launched ballistic missiles. The sanctions were extended for six months from April.

North Korean ships that wanted to carry humanitarian aid from Japan could also make port calls, although Tokyo was not considering providing such aid itself at this time, Machimura said.

But Tokyo would continue to refuse to take part in energy aid as part of a multilateral deal aimed at ending the secretive communist state's nuclear program until the abduction dispute is resolved, Machimura said.

ABDUCTEES ANGERED

Families of the Japanese abductees were angered by the relaxing of the sanctions, saying a reinvestigation into the abductions did not amount to progress on the issue.

"The families have called for the victims to return home," Shigeo Iizuka, whose sister was abducted, was quoted as saying by Kyodo news agency. "The issue should be resolved completely."

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda later told reporters that the government would keep trying to have all the abductees return.

"This will start negotiations," he said. "Unless we negotiate, there will be no solution."

North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents had abducted 13 Japanese. Five of them were repatriated that year, but Pyongyang has insisted that the other eight were dead.

Tokyo wants more information about the eight and four others it says were also kidnapped, and wants any survivors sent home.

The bilateral talks between Japan and North Korea are a building block in a six-party process that also involves the United States, China, South Korea and Russia aimed at persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

The result of the latest bilateral talks may be a sign that Pyongyang wanted the broader talks to move forward, Machimura said.

"I think North Korea took a step because they felt that unless there is progress in talks between North Korea and Japan, there will be no solution to overall talks and that won't be in its national interest," he said.

Under a 2005 agreement, North Korea promised to drop all its nuclear programs in exchange for diplomatic and economic benefits.

Pyongyang was due to declare details of it nuclear programmes at the end of last year, but the declaration has been held up, partly because of its reluctance to discuss any transfer of nuclear technology to other countries, notably Syria, as well as to account for its suspected uranium enrichment program.

(Writing by Linda Sieg; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Chris Gallagher)