DPRK will conditionally cooperate with Japan in the repatriation of four of the nine Japanese radicals who hijacked a Japan Airlines plane to DPRK in 1970, a senior DPRK Foreign Ministry official said Monday.

In a meeting with a Japanese mission led by former House of Representatives member Shinya Totsuka, Song Il Ho pledged Pyongyang's active cooperation in the matter if the four hijackers and the Japanese government enter into talks.

The official Korean Central News Agency reported earlier this month that the four Japanese hijackers have been seeking the North's help in realizing their return to their homeland and that the North is not against their repatriation.

But it was the first time that a DPRK official has publicly spelled out the government's position on the issue.

DPRK appears eager to improve ties with Japan by resolving some of the longstanding bilateral issues, including the return of former hijackers and the abduction of Japanese nationals by DPRK agents in the 1970s and 1980s.

Song, who heads the Korea-Japan exchange association, said the members of the Red Army Faction sent a letter to the DPRK government late last month saying that they no longer have reasons to stay in DPRK now that many of their family members have returned to Japan.

Song said it would be difficult for DPRK to turn them over to Japan because the two countries have no extradition treaty. Japan and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations either.

He suggested that the members should talk with the Japanese government on ways to return home.

On the abduction issue regarding 10 missing Japanese, Song said the incidents took place in localities at the hands of people working for special agencies and that it is difficult to find evidence after two decades since their disappearances. Song emphasized that the government is doing its best to reinvestigate the cases.

Song saw off Charles Jenkins and his daughters when they left Pyongyang for Indonesia to meet with Hitomi Soga, a former Japanese abductee who has been married to Jenkins and repatriated to Japan in October 2002.

The nine members of the Red Army Faction group hijacked a Japan Airlines plane on a domestic flight from Tokyo on March 31, 1970, and forced it to fly to Pyongyang in Japan's first hijacking.

The plane flew to Seoul before landing in Pyongyang. The hijackers were granted political asylum there. Of the nine, three died and two who later returned to Japan were convicted of the hijacking.

Sourcve: Agencies