The families of Japanese abducted to North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s urged the government Monday to step up its pressure on Pyongyang.

Their statement followed a meeting with senior diplomats who met last week with North Korean officials in Pyongyang. No progress was made on the abductions issue in those talks.

The group urged Mitoji Yabunaka, head of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanic Affairs Bureau who attended the Pyongyang talks, to set a deadline for a resolution to the abductions issue and invoke economic sanctions if North Korea fails to make any headway, according to Shigeru Yokota, who heads the group of abductees' families.

"If the next talks also end up with a mere agreement to continue negotiations, it will get nowhere," Yokota told a news conference.

He said North Korea only agreed to the talks last week after the Diet enacted legislation making unilateral economic sanctions possible.

Yokota said Yabunaka did not rule out the imposition of sanctions.

"I have a feeling that the legislation is effective and there is no need to ease that pressure," Yokota quoted Yabunaka as saying.

During last week's talks in Pyongyang, North Korean officials strongly protested the Feb. 9 enactment of an amendment to the foreign-exchange law that allows the government to ban cash remittances to North Korea -- one of the country's major sources of funding -- without a United Nations resolution or other multinational agreement, the Foreign Ministry said. The Diet passed the bill two days before Yabunaka and Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka went to Pyongyang for the talks.

Earlier Monday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Japan will carefully judge North Korea's moves before deciding whether to impose sanctions.

"We will consider both dialogue and pressure," Fukuda told a news conference. "It is not a bad thing for Japan to have various policy alternatives."