"I will firmly state Japan's position at the six-nation forum that all the issues -- nuclear arms, missiles and the abduction -- must be resolved," chief delegate Mitoji Yabunaka told reporters at Narita airport before the 10-strong mission's departure.

Tokyo has reaffirmed that any economic aid from Tokyo to the cash-strapped Stalinist state will only be forthcoming once Pyongyang gives up its nuclear arms ambitions, abandons missiles and is sincere about the abduction issue.

Yabunaka, head of the Japanese foreign ministry's Asian and Oceanian affairs, is scheduled to meet Tuesday morning with his US and South Korean counterparts, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly and South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo Hyuck, Japanese officials said.

The trilateral meeting will be followed by an informal reception in the evening for the six nations, which also include North Korea, China and Russia, the officials said.

"Japan, the United States and South Korea have had thorough consultations and I don't believe there is a discrepancy in their perceptions toward the upcoming talks," Chief Cabinet Secrertary Yasuo Fukuda told a regular briefing.

North Korea, which is seeking US guarantees for the survival of its regime, has denounced Japan's plan to bring up the kidnapping case as a "foul purpose to create a complication in the way of the talks."

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il admitted nearly a year ago that his secretive state had kidnapped a dozen young Japanese to use them for training spies to infiltrate the South.

But Pyongyang's admission that many of the abductees had since died provoked an unexpectedly strong public backlash.

Five survivors among the kidnap victims have been allowed to return home but there are growing calls here that their families left behind in the North should also be sent here.

Japan, which owes the North a token of compensation for its colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945, also insists there must be more abductees still alive in North Korea and that dozens more Japanese might have been kidnapped other than those whom Pyongyang has admitted seizing.

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