Japan will continue urging North Korea to abandon its nuclear arms program in a verifiable and irreversible manner, Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said Monday.

In a foreign-policy speech to the Diet, Kawaguchi said Japan will also continue making efforts to resolve the issue of Japanese nationals abducted to North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.

"Issues concerning North Korea are on Japan's top diplomatic agenda," she said. "Japan will continue to seek a comprehensive resolution to such security issues as the abductions and North Korea's missile and nuclear (arms) developments based on the Japan-North Korea Pyongyang Declaration."

She said Japan also remains committed to contributing to the reconstruction of postwar Iraq, which will lead to stability in the Middle East and the international community, and to increasing efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

China, Japan, North and South Korea, Russia and the U.S. have been working toward a second round of talks to resolve Pyongyang's nuclear threat, following North Korea's offers to end the crisis. The nations hope to hold the next round of talks at an early date.

North Korea said earlier this month that it is prepared to make a bold concession by suspending testing and production of nuclear weapons and abiding by a freeze of its nuclear facilities if the U.S. takes steps such as lifting economic sanctions.

Pyongyang also allowed an unofficial U.S. delegation to visit its key nuclear facility earlier this month.

Kawaguchi said Japan "strongly hopes" North Korea and other nations suspected of developing WMD will follow Libya's example and abandon their WMD programs.