"Chairman Kim said that North Korea has the desire to give up its nuclear programme," Koizumi told a small group of foreign news media Monday, said the premier's spokesman Yu Kameoka.

"(Kim) said that the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula was the final objective and that a freeze of the nuclear programme would naturally require verification," Koizumi was quoted as saying.

"The premier will explain this at the G8 summit," Kameoka said.

Koizumi met Kim for their second meeting in Pyongyang last month, and returned home with five children who had been left behind by two Japanese couples who were abducted by the North in the 1970s.

Koizumi in return promised millions of dollars in food and medical aid to the impoverished country.

Despite the overwhelming focus in Japan on the plight of the abductees and their families, the Japanese premier told the reporters he had stressed to Kim that a resolution of the nuclear issue was of benefit to North Korea.

"I told him that the difference between the gains from keeping nuclear weapons and dismantling them is like the difference between heaven and earth," Koizumi said according to Kameoka.

Koizumi also told Kim that substantial aid to Pyongyang would not come from Japan unless the abduction and nuclear issues were resolved.

The Japanese premier flew out from Tokyo Tuesday morning for the Group of Eight summit in Sea Island, Georgia.

Koizumi was scheduled to meet with US President George W. Bush later in the day for a working lunch on the sidelines of the G8 meeting.

They were expected to discuss the North Korean nuclear crisis and the fate of a US army deserter, who has refused to leave North Korea to join his wife in Japan for fear of being handed over to US military authorities for court martial.

WAR.WIRE