Japan may extend North Korea economic sanctions: report

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan will extend economic sanctions against North Korea beyond April 13 unless progress was made on the fate of Japanese nationals abducted by Pyongyang decades ago, Kyodo news agency reported on Saturday.

Tokyo reviews the sanctions it imposed on the reclusive communist state every six months.

The sanctions, which were imposed after Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test in 2006, ban North Korean imports and bar its ships from calling at Japanese ports.

The fate of the abductees is a highly emotive issue in Japan. Pyongyang has admitted that its agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, five of whom have since been repatriated.

North Korea says the other eight are dead, but Tokyo wants more information about their fate and information on another four people it says were also kidnapped.

Japan's top government spokesman, Nobutaka Machimura, said the sanctions extension would be announced at a meeting with relatives of the abductees, Kyodo reported.

In October, North Korea sealed a deal in six-party negotiations with South Korea, Japan, the United States, China and Russia to disable its main Yongbyon nuclear facility and declare all nuclear activities by the end of the year.

In return, North Korea was to receive heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid, and the United States agreed to consider taking North Korea off the list of nations that sponsor terrorism.

While international inspectors dismantled the Yongbyon facility, North Korea has yet to provide the other nuclear information as required.

U.S. officials held discussions with North Korea in Geneva on Friday in an effort to make progress on disarmament.

Kyodo also said that Akitaka Saiki, the top Japanese envoy to the six-party talks, will meet with his U.S. counterpart Christopher Hill during a two-day visit to Washington starting on Monday.

Japan established diplomatic relations with capitalist South Korea in 1965 but has yet to do so with the communist North.

(Reporting by Eric Burroughs; editing by Sami Aboudi)