Wednesday's surprise visit by two senior Foreign Ministry officials to Pyongyang has fueled speculation -- or, to be more precise, expectation -- among the public that there will be developments on the abduction issue.

Specifically, hopes have risen that the officials will return with the relatives of five Japanese who were kidnapped by North Korean spies in the 1970s before returning to Japan in October 2002.

Government officials warn, however, that it is unrealistic to expect North Korea to unconditionally permit the families of the five to visit Japan, as this would represent a complete about-face from its repeated demands that Tokyo have the five return to North Korea first.

"(Returning the families now) would not be beneficial to North Korea, as that in itself will not prompt Japan to provide economic assistance -- the issues of its nuclear program and missiles also need to be resolved," said a senior Foreign Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A more realistic option is for both sides to agree to launch bilateral talks on the abduction issue, which also includes a further investigation into 10 Japanese the government believes were abducted by the North, the official said. Pyongyang has claimed that eight of those 10 are dead.

Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka, Mitoji Yabunaka, director of the ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, and three other officials began negotiations with their North Korean counterparts Thursday.

During talks Wednesday over dinner, the Japanese side maintained that it cannot provide economic assistance unless the nuclear, missile and abduction issues are resolved in a comprehensive manner, Japanese sources said.

In response, the North stuck to its basic position of blaming Japan for not keeping its promise to return the five, they said.

But Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi welcomed the latest developments -- the first formal talks between the two countries since October 2002.

"I think North Korea has come to realize that it needs to resolve the abduction issue" to gain economic assistance, Kawaguchi told reporters Thursday.

Tokyo will continue to demand that North Korea allow the relatives of the five and the daughter of Megumi Yokota, an abductee whom Pyongyang claims died in 1993, to come to Japan and conduct a thorough investigation into the fate of other Japanese it believes were abducted, she said.

Japan deems the circumstances surrounding the alleged deaths of the eight other Japanese the North has admitted to abducting to be suspicious, and is also seeking more information about two people the North Koreans say they know nothing about.

Given the situation, it is considered strange that Pyongyang would agree to hold formal talks with Japanese officials at this time.

One expert on international relations noted that North Korea apparently agreed to hold the talks to create a less hostile atmosphere ahead of six-way discussions concerning its nuclear program that are to be held in Beijing later this month.

North Korea conveyed its intention to hold bilateral talks with Japan after the schedule for the six-way talks was officially announced on Feb. 3, according to government sources.

"For North Korea, freezing its nuclear program and gaining security assurances from the United States are not enough," said Shunji Hiraiwa, an assistant professor at the University of Shizuoka. "Its goal is to gain economic assistance," of which Japan is the main provider, he observed.

Pyongyang has begun to lay the groundwork so that economic assistance will be provided swiftly when the six-party talks, involving both Koreas, China, Japan, the U.S. and Russia, are in their final stages, he said.

But even if the two sides make headway on the abduction issue during the current round of talks, government sources said Japan still remains firm on its demand that North Korea must completely, irreversibly and verifiably abandon its suspected nuclear program.

Japan's close cooperation with the U.S. and South Korea on this point also makes it unlikely that Tokyo will soften its stance on the nuclear issue, regardless of the outcome of the Pyongyang visit, the sources said.