North Korea responded with a faint hint of change in its attitude when Chief Japanese delegate Mitoji Yabunaka approached his North Korean counterpart Kim Yong-Il after the end of the three-day talks, a Japanese official said.

Japan, a key US Pacific ally, has insisted that it will not help the Stalinist state's collapsed economy unless Pyongyang gives up nuclear ambitions, stops making and exporting missiles and is sincere about the kidnapping cases.

The two delegates only presented their conflicting views on the row on Thursday when they met twice on the sidelines of the nuclear talks, for the first formal contact between the two countries in 10 months.

But on Friday, Kim told Yabunaka the North wanted to solve outstanding "bilateral issues, including the abduction issue, one by one" under the joint declaration issued last year, the official said.

Pyongyang had declared that the case was closed after North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi signed the declaration at a historic summit in Pyongyang last September.

Under the accord, North Korea vowed to settle questions related to the kidnap victims and Japan said it would extend economic aid to Pyongyang after the two countries normalised relations.

The Japanese official noted an "improvement" in North Korea's response. But he cautioned any optimism.

"There is still nothing specific in what has been said," he said.

Yabunaka repeated his demand that families of the abductees be sent to Japan as soon as possibile.

During the Pyongyang summit, Kim Jong-Il admitted his agents had kidnapped a dozen young Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s for use in the training of spies to infiltrate South Korea. Only five of them are alleged to have survived.

The kidnap issue has angered the Japanese public and, coupled with the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, stalled the rapprochement process.

Five surviving kidnap victims have been allowed to return home but there are growing calls in Japan for their families -- seven children and a spouse -- left behind in North Korea to be allowed to leave. The five survivors have refused to go back to North Korea.

Japan, which owes the North a token of atonement for its colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945, insists more of the abductees must be still alive. It also believes dozens more Japanese might have been kidnapped.

"We will seize on every opportunity to seek a settlement on the issue," Yabunaka told reporters Friday.

North Korea had tried to block the abduction issue from the six-nation agenda as irrelevant.

But it is widely seen intent on using the issue as a card in eking out aid from the rich neighbour across the Sea of Japan (East Sea).

Yabunaka offered in the six-nation talks that Japan could consider giving energy aid to the North if Pyonyang starts scrapping its nuclear programme, a Japanese official said.

But in Tokyo, the major Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun warned in an editorial Friday such a bait would give a "wrong signal" to Pyongyang.

"Japan's massive amounts of rice aid to the North have led to no solution."

The outspoken Tokyo governor, Shintaro Ishihara, urged the Japanese government to impose economic sanctions against North Korea to speed up negotiations over the kidnap issue.

WAR.WIRE