Japan will ask North Korea to hold bilateral talks later this month on the sidelines of the six-party discussions seeking to end Pyongyang's nuclear threat, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Monday.
Hosoda's remarks come after North Korea's surprise announcement over the weekend that it would return to the six-party talks, which bring together the two Koreas, Japan, the United States, China and Russia, in the week of July 25.
Officials of the U.S., South Korea and Japan will meet before the six-way talks to coordinate their policies, Hosoda said, adding that Tokyo in the six-way forum will again demand that Pyongyang account for the Japanese nationals the North's agents abducted in the 1970s and 1980s.