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Japan and North Korea agreed at weekend talks in Beijing to launch three working groups including one to discuss establishing diplomatic ties, Japan's chief delegate to the talks, Akitaka Saiki, said on Sunday.

The talks could begin in late January, Saiki told reporters in remarks carried by public broadcaster NHK.

Japan had proposed resuming normalization talks while handling two other issues -- North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals to help train spies in the 1970s and 1980s, and Pyongyang's nuclear programmes -- in parallel through separate working groups, Kyodo news agency said.

Saiki said North Korea had accepted Japan's proposal and that Pyongyang had promised to take steps on the abductees and other unresolved issues in a "sincere manner".

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

Pyongyang has stated that the abductee issue was settled but Tokyo wants more information on the eight and another three who Japan says were also kidnapped, and insists that bilateral ties cannot be normalized until the problem is resolved.

For its part, North Korea has demanded reparations for Japan's often brutal colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

North Korea, China and Japan, as well as the United States, South Korea and Russia, have been participating in on-off six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons development. The last round of those talks in November produced little progress, and a fresh session is scheduled for early 2006.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has twice visited North Korea for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, agreeing to establish diplomatic ties and provide full-scale financial aid once they solve the long list of differences.

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

(Chinadaily.com via agencies December 26, 2005)