Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Thursday that Japan and North Korea have made progress in talks over the abduction issue, and indicated he might visit Pyongyang again to resolve the deadlock.

He said that during bilateral talks earlier this week in Beijing, the two sides discussed how Pyongyang would send to Japan the families of five Japanese nationals who were abducted to North Korea in the late 1970s and allowed to return to Japan in October 2002.

The two sides "talked in detail, including the issue" of allowing the family members of the five to come to Japan, Koizumi said after receiving reports from two senior officials of the Foreign Ministry who attended the talks.

Asked if he planned to visit Pyongyang in order to collect the kin of the five repatriated abductees, he said, "I cannot say anything at this point because it concerns the entire issue" on North Korea.

He was referring to the outcome of talks involving Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka, Mitoji Yabunaka, the ministry's director of Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, and Jong Thae Hwa, Pyongyang's ambassador in charge of normalization talks with Japan.

Koizumi said Japan will seek to normalize ties with North Korea in line with the Pyongyang Declaration that he signed with Pyongyang leader Kim Jong Il during their 2002 summit.

According to the declaration, Japan will normalize relations with the North after issues of bilateral concern are resolved, including Pyongyang's nuclear arms and missile ambitions. Tokyo will provide economic assistance after diplomatic relations are normalized, it states.

Masatoshi Abe, senior vice foreign minister, told a news conference that he would not rule out the possibility of Koizumi returning to Pyongyang.

He said the government is not making any specific plans, however.

"I was told that the behavior (of the North Korean side) was serious (toward resolving the abduction issue), unlike the previous meeting," Abe said.

Hiroyuki Hosoda, deputy chief Cabinet secretary, said the talks could be considered meaningful in that the North felt a need to hold bilateral discussions with Japan.

Japan is expected to hold bilateral talks with North Korea next week in Beijing on the sidelines of a six-nation working-level meeting on resolving North Korea's nuclear threat. The six-way talks include the Koreas, Japan, the U.S., China and Russia.

But because North Korea may be represented by an official in charge of U.S. affairs in the six-way negotiations, the talks might not see much progress in relation to Japan, a Foreign Ministry official said.

Yabunaka refused to give details of his talks with the North Korean side. But after the two-day meeting in Beijing ended Wednesday, he said, "This time we exchanged opinions in depth to resolve the (abduction) issue and not just talk about the principles, as we did in February."

Both sides agreed to continue discussions, he said.

Song Il Ho, chief of North Korean delegate, told reporters that "there was progress" in the talks.

During bilateral talks in February, Tanaka and Yabunaka urged North Korea to unconditionally send the five repatriated abductees' seven offspring and the American husband of one of the five to Japan.

But North Korea officials said Japan should first have the five freed abductees return to Pyongyang as it had promised. Japan has denied making any such promise, and has refused to comply with this demand. It has also rejected Pyongyang's offer to let the families go if the five came to the North to collect them.