A delegation headed by senior diplomat Mitoji Yabunaka will leave Tuesday for Beijing to talk with North Korean officials about Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese citizens, diplomatic sources said Monday.
Senior officials of the Foreign Ministry on Monday discussed the approach the delegates may take during the bilateral talks with the North that may start Tuesday -- the first governmental-level contact between the two countries since February.
Yabunaka, director general of the ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, will again urge North Korea to "unconditionally" allow the children of the five returned abductees and the American husband of one of the five to come to Japan, the sources said.
If this comes about, Japan would be willing to resume normalization talks, even to the point of discussing economic cooperation, the sources said.
Yabunaka might also carry a message from Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the sources said.
May 12 has been set for a working group session to be held in Beijing in line with six-nation talks on dealing with Pyongyang's nuclear threat. But Japan has been seeking separate bilateral talks to focus on the abduction issue before the working group talks involving it, the two Koreas, the United States, Russia and China begin.