Japan to Lift Some Sanctions on N.Korea -Kyodo

North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents had abducted 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s.

Japan 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, Japan's top government spokesman said on Friday.

Talks on establishing diplomatic ties between the two wary neighbours 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 programmes," Machimura told a news conference.

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.

Tokyo has also refused to provide energy aid as part of a multilateral deal aimed at ending the secretive communist state's nuclear programme until the abduction dispute is resolved.

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

North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents had abducted 13 Japanese. Five of them were repatriated that year, but Pyongyang has said 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 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.

Under a 2005 agreement, North Korea promised to drop all its nuclear programmes 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 programme.