NORTH KOREA: Recent days have seen a flurry of diplomatic activity in east Asia to find a breakthrough on the nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula, with a focus on efforts to improve relations between the region's most powerful player, Japan, and impoverished North Korea.
Japanese Prime Minister Mr Junichiro Koizumi will go to Pyongyang this weekend to try to reunite the families of five Japanese kidnapped by North Korea decades ago.
The abduction of Japanese people by North Korea is one of the strangest stories of the Cold War in Asia and is a hugely emotive issue in Japan.
It is a major obstacle to any deal on the nuclear crisis as Tokyo wants clarity before it will commit to closer links with the Stalinist state.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has admitted his country's agents kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, although Japan says North Korea has kidnapped at least 15 of its citizens.
Five of the abductees came home to Japan but had to leave behind their seven North Korean-born children - now in their teens and twenties - and one spouse, a former US soldier who defected to the communist state.
Pyongyang said another eight kidnapped Japanese died from illness, accidents or suicide.
There is speculation that Mr Koizumi might pick up the relatives of the five Japanese citizens who returned to Japan in October 2002, more than a quarter of a century after being abducted and taken to North Korea to train spies.
Resolving the dispute would clear the way for talks on establishing diplomatic ties between the two countries and create a more positive atmosphere for the next round of six-party talks, due to take place by the end of June.
In the meantime, North Korea, the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia held mid-level "talks about talks" in Beijing last week.
China, which is one of North Korea's few remaining allies, said progress had been made.
But Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo told the Xinhua state news agency there was still a long way to go.
"If all sides, with full sincerity, enough patience and confidence, try to enhance trust and settle suspicion, they can expand consensus and push forward the six-party talks," he told delegates at the talks on Saturday.
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when US officials said North Korea had said it was working on a secret programme to enrich uranium for weapons.
US officials believe North Korea already has one or two nuclear bombs and could make several more within months, although it doubts it has the missiles to transport the warheads.
North Korea publicly denies having a uranium programme in addition to its known plutonium-based programme, but it brandishes the threat of what it vaguely describes as its "nuclear deterrent" in an effort to extract concessions.
Washington wants a promise by Pyongyang on a "complete, verifiable and irreversible" end to North Korea's nuclear programmes, while the North Koreans say that if they agree to suspend their nuclear programme, they should receive economic aid from the west, including energy aid.