"The six-nation talks are mainly discussing the question of (North Korea's) nuclear arms development, which greatly concerns Japan," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said.

"I think it is impossible for Japan to be excluded," the top government spokesman told a regular news briefing.

He added that the United States and the other parties -- North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan -- intend to maintain the current six-country framework.

Hosoda was speaking in response to a commentary on Monday by North Korea's official media which denounced Japan's insistence on the abductions.

"Japan is seeking its political aim by creating complications over the 'abduction issue' which has already been settled," the Korean Central News Agency said.

"We cannot help feeling disgust at sitting face to face with Japan at the multi-party conference table," the agency said. "As we declared earlier, we will thoroughly reconsider the matter of taking part in the six-party talks with Japan."

Japan has told North Korea that a solution to the abduction issue is a precondition for the normalisation of relations, which could result in massive Japanese aid to the impoverished Stalinist state.

North Korea attended three rounds of inconclusive discussions on the nuclear stand-off. It shunned a fourth round originally scheduled for last September, complaining of "hostile" US policies.

But it offered last week to resume six-nation talks if US President George W. Bush, who will start his second term on Thursday, tones down his rhetoric and formulates a friendlier policy towards it.

North Korea admitted in 2002 that it kidnapped Japanese during the Cold War to train its spies in Japanese language and culture.

It has allowed five kidnap victims to return to Japan and claimed eight others were dead. But Japan has insisted that the eight were alive and kept under wraps for security reasons.

Japan has been considering economic sanctions against Pyongyang after learning last month that the North Korean authorities had provided it with the ashes of other people to prove the deaths of some kidnap victims.

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