The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) agreed the main points of a bill aimed at banning North Korean ships from entering Japanese ports if they are deemed a threat to the country's "peace and security."

The move came eight days after Japan's parliament passed legislation which makes it easier to block cash remittances to North Korea, the latest diplomatic screw tightening ahead of a second round of six-nation nuclear crisis talks in Beijing next week.

"What is essential is that we solve the problems peacefully and through discussions," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters.

He said earlier that Japan could use both "dialogue and pressure" to deal with the North. "We have to think about it with a comprehensive approach."

Koizumi's number two in the conservative LDP Shinzo Abe said the party would aim to have the bill approved during the current session of parliament which runs until late June.

Despite the lack of diplomatic relations between the neighbours, North Korean merchant vessels frequently call at Japanese ports.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are believed to have been transferred from Japan to North Korea, mainly by pro-Pyongyang ethnic Koreans or sympathisers.

Both ruling and opposition parties have been weighing economic sanctions against Pyongyang as public anger mounted over North Korea's abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s.

The two countries held rare high-level contacts in Pyongyang last week on the abduction issue without producing any tangible result.

The return to Japan of the eight relatives of five surviving Japanese among the kidnap victims is Tokyo's top condition for the re-opening of formal talks on normalizing bilateral ties.

The five were allowed to return to Japan in October 2002 following a historic bilateral summit. They have since refused to go back.

Japan wants the issue dealt with in tandem with the six-nation roundtable to resolve the nuclear standoff with Pyongyang.

The first round of talks involving China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Russia and the United States ended inconclusively in Beijing last August.

WAR.WIRE