It was the first time Tokyo announced its readiness to help the impoverished but heavily armed North with its energy needs if Pyongyang freezes all its nuclear programmes as a step toward their abolition.

The pledge was made at the six-nation nuclear crisis talks here, the day after the United States proposed Pyongyang dismantle its plutonium and uranium weapons programmes in exchange for heavy oil.

South Korea, China and Russia, also members of the six-nation forum, have already been considering extending energy aid in response to North Korea's demand for "corresponding measures" in exchange for its nuclear freeze.

The United States will not join the energy aid but offered a "provisional" guarantee not to invade the North.

Mitoji Yabunaka, the chief Japanese delegate, told the second-day session of the six-nation talks that three conditions should be set by North Korea for its nuclear freeze, according to a statement from the Japanese delegation.

The conditions included that "all nuclear programmes" be covered by the freeze, that North Korea volunteers information on the details of nuclear programmes and that the freeze be verified in "definite" terms.

"Our country is prepared to join international energy assistance at the six-party talks if North Korea's freeze satisfies such conditions as strict disclosure of information," Yabunaka said.

He added that the freeze should be limited to a "short period of time" as the common goal was strict nuclear dismantlement.

Japan's softening stance on energy aid followed Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in Pyongyang last month.

At his second summit with Koizumi in 20 months, Kim promised to be more helpful in solving the cases of Japanese kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s.

The abduction issue, along with the nuclear standoff, has been stalling talks on normalisation of relations between the two countries.

At the first Kim-Koizumi meeting in 2002, Japan vowed to help the North with economic aid after ties were normalised, as a token of atonement for its colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

Japan has been insisting that the abduction issue must be cleared up as a precondition to rapprochement with North Korea.

"Energy assistance is a matter that should be separated from the agenda of bilateral issues and considered within the six-nation framework," a Japanese delegate to the talks said.

It marked a departure for Japan which had drummed up the abduction issue in the two previous rounds of the six-nation talks in February and in August last year.

In a meeting with Japan on the sidelines of the six-nation talks, North Korea expressed satisfaction with the Japanese turnaround, saying that the Japanese side had "demonstrated its attitude toward solving the nuclear issue," the official said.

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