Japan has agreed in principle to pay Taiwanese tuna fishing boat owners to scrap boats that have been registered to countries not under an international treaty limiting tuna catches, the Fisheries Agency said Friday.

The agreement was reached in the course of private-sector-level talks that ended Thursday in the southern Taiwan port city of Kaohsiung, said the agency, which attended the negotiations as an observer.

The two sides, however, failed to agree on how much Taiwanese owners would receive for each boat they scrap. The Japanese side proposed paying up to 35 million yen for each boat, but the Taiwanese side demanded more, the agency said.

The two sides will seek to agree on a compensation amount in the next round of talks slated for late March, it said. Under a 1969 international agreement, 22 countries agreed to quotas for their tuna catches.

The accord prompted some owners in Taiwan to resort to flags of convenience by registering their fishing boats with the governments of countries that are not signatories to the agreement, thereby evading the quotas, the agency said.

These catches in excess of Taiwan's official quota threaten to deplete tuna resources, agency officials said.

The two sides are considering setting up a fund -- with contributions from their fishing industries and the Japanese government -- to pay the compensation, they said.

A large portion of these boats were originally bought from Japanese owners. The Taiwanese owners would start scrapping a total of 53 tuna fishing boats from next year if a compensation figure can be agreed upon, the agency said.