Japan has said it is still negotiating with North Korea to allow five kidnap victims to stay permanently in Japan.

Comments by the Japanese chief cabinet secretary on Friday clarified a government announcement on Thursday that the five Japanese nationals, who are visiting their homeland 24 years after being abducted by North Korea, would not have to depart next week as planned.

We have yet to reach an accord

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda

The five - two couples and a woman - were due to visit Japan for only about two weeks, but their children were left behind in North Korea.

They are the only known survivors of at least 13 Japanese snatched by North Korea in the 1970s and 80s to help train spies in Japanese customs.

''We have yet to reach an accord. We are still negotiating,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told reporters on Friday.

The two countries are due to hold talks in Malaysia next week to start normalising diplomatic relations.

Support offered

It is still not clear whether the abductees want to live in Japan. Their relatives have insisted the abductees are not free to speak openly and that the children are being held in North Korea as hostages.

Megumi Yokota is said to have committed suicide
	Japan's missing Eight Japanese said to be dead Five still alive in North Korea The survivors have children in N Korea Kim Jong-il says he has punished the culprits See also: Profiles of the missing

One of the kidnap victims said his children did not even know he was Japanese, and they would suffer culture-shock if they settled in Japan.

Officials in the coastal town of Obama, where two of the Japanese were kidnapped, said they would help the abductees re-settle.

Plans being considered included job training and language lessons for the children, said Keiichi Matsuzaki, spokesman for the town's homecoming committee.

"We are thinking about how to support them," he said. "But getting the children to come back is the next step."

Family ties

Tomiko Kaneko, the younger sister of abductee Hitomi Soga, said her family in Japan would understand if she wanted to go back to North Korea to talk to her husband and two teenage children.

One of the dead kidnap victims had a daughter (pictured)

"I want her to make any decision after she has discussed it with her family in North Korea," Mainichi newspaper quoted her as saying.

Hitomi Soga's situation is difficult because her husband, Charles Jenkins, is listed as a US army deserter and could face charges if he went to Japan.

Japanese media said Tokyo was asking Washington to grant amnesty to Mr Jenkins.

In another emotive case, genetic test results released on Thursday confirmed that an abductee said to have died in North Korea, had a daughter who lives in Pyongyang.

The child's mother, Megumi Yokota, was abducted in 1977 aged 13. North Korea says she committed suicide in 1993, but her family question that report.

Yokota's parents reacted with excitement when DNA tests confirmed they had a 15-year-old granddaughter, Kim Hye-gyong, who lives with her North Korean father in Pyongyang.

"Since she's junior high school age, she will be interested in seeing Tokyo Disneyland. I want to take her to theme parks and Kyoto," said Shigeru Yokota.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Tokyo would try to arrange for the girl to visit Japan.