TOKYO, August 6, 2008 (AFP) - Japan said Wednesday it will hold talks with North Korea in China next week, two months after Pyongyang promised to reinvestigate abductions of Japanese nationals to train its spies.

The meeting, aimed at an eventual normalisation of bilateral relations, is part of a working group set up under the framework of six-nation talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programmes.

Japan will be represented by its top nuclear negotiator, Akitaka Saiki, at the two-day talks in the northeastern city of Shenyang starting on Monday, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

After the last bilateral talks, Pyongyang said it would launch a new investigation into the abduction issue, leading Tokyo to lift some of its sanctions against the communist nation.

North Korea has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s. It has returned five victims and their families, and said the matter was resolved.

But Japan insists that North Korea is hiding survivors and has abducted more people than it acknowledges.