JAPAN, N. KOREA TO HOLD WORKING-LEVEL TALKS IN BEIJING

TOKYO, June 6 Kyodo - Japan and North Korea will hold unofficial working-level talks in Beijing on Saturday on Pyongyang's past abductions and other issues in preparation for a possible resumption of negotiations toward normalizing relations as early as by the end of the month, Japanese government officials said Friday. Akitaka Saiki, director general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, is expected to urge Song Il Ho, the North's ambassador in charge of normalization talks with Japan, for concrete progress on the unresolved abductions of Japanese nationals when they meet at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing Saturday afternoon. Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura, the top government spokesman, said the two will engage in "a relatively short exchange of opinions." Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura told a separate news conference that he does not hold high expectations for significant progress at the talks, stressing that it is only a ''preparatory'' meeting. ''They will discuss the current situation of Japan-North Korea relations and how to proceed from where we are,'' Komura said. ''If the other side suddenly comes up with some kind of offer (on the abduction issue), of course that would be good. But I am not holding such high expectations from tomorrow's meeting.'' Japan apparently hopes to build momentum toward the abduction issue, the key to officially resuming bilateral normalization talks and will likely press Pyongyang by stressing that resolving the abductions is a must before the United States will remove it from a blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism. Saiki and Song are likely to each explain their government's respective positions on the abduction issue and the settling of the wartime past including Japan's former colonization of the peninsula, Japanese officials said. Tokyo will also take up the issue of having North Korea hand over Japanese radicals who hijacked a Japan Airlines plane to the North in 1970, a Foreign Ministry senior official said. The official, who asked not to be named, also said the working group on normalizing Japan-North Korea relations is expected to be resumed by the end of June. At the working group talks last September in Mongolia, Song dismissed Japan's demand for the return of abductees who remain missing and said there are no further measures to be taken. ''I guess North Korea has concluded that there needs to be some progress in relations with Japan in order to get itself off the (U.S.) list of state sponsors of terrorism,'' a government source said. Analysts said North Korea may also be trying to engage Japan in dialogue amid progress in Pyongyang's negotiations with Washington and the overall six-party denuclearization process. Tokyo, which continues independent economic sanctions against the reclusive state, has stood firm on not taking part in multilateral energy aid to the North for as long as it sees no progress on the abductions. Saturday's talks will be held for about three hours, Japanese government sources said. Saiki will depart from Japan on Saturday morning and is scheduled to return the next day. In late May, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill urged North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan to resume the bilateral talks with Japan at an early date. Hill and Kim, both chief delegates at the six-way talks, met in Beijing on North Korea's denuclearization, including its unaccomplished promise of submitting a complete declaration of its nuclear arms and development programs. The six-party talks involve the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals in the late 1970s and early 1980s remain a major obstacle preventing the two from normalizing relations.