The government hopes to resume stalled normalization talks with North Korea in June if the families of former abductees are allowed to come to Japan as a result of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Pyongyang on Saturday, according to government sources.
Koizumi plans to make the proposal to Kim Jong Il as an incentive to allow the family members out of North Korea, they said.
If a new round of normalization talks start, Japan is ready to discuss the contents of economic assistance it would provide, based on the Pyongyang Declaration issued after the first meeting between Koizumi and Kim in September 2002, the sources said.
Koizumi hopes to bring the eight family members to Japan when he returns from North Korea.
Senior Foreign Ministry officials, including Mitoji Yabunaka, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, decided Sunday that a team of officials from the ministry and the National Police Agency will leave for Pyongyang on Monday to prepare for the summit.
The normalization talks have been stalled since October 2002 over the abduction issue, a major obstacle for the two countries to establish diplomatic relations.
During Koizumi's first visit, North Korea admitted that it abducted 13 Japanese in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and said eight of them are dead.
The other five returned to Japan the following month.
The Japanese government has since demanded that North Korea allow the eight family members of the five to travel to Japan, and that it provide more information on people Pyongyang said are dead or have never entered the North.