North Korea, locked in a dispute with the United States over its nuclear weapons program, is showing signs of abandoning its nuclear ambitions, a South Korean government spokesman said on Friday.

"It is very fortunate for the future of the Korean peninsula that North Korea shows signs of giving up its nuclear program and that the United States has indicated its intention to provide North Korea with security assurances," visiting South Korean government spokesman Cho Young-dong told reporters in Tokyo.

He made the remarks amid a flurry of diplomatic activity among officials from the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia to try to kick-start a fresh round of six-way talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

"We place great hopes on a next round of six-party talks expected to be held in Beijing next month," he said. "The (South) Korean government pursues the principle that the nuclear issue must be resolved through dialogue and compromise."

He declined to comment on media reports that the second round of six-way talks would be held in Beijing on December 17-19.

The United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia held an inconclusive first round of talks in Beijing in August in an effort to end the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear program.

In an attempt to defuse the crisis, Washington said last month it was willing to give Pyongyang unspecified security assurances in exchange for the North putting a verifiable and irreversible end to its nuclear ambitions.

Senior diplomats from the United States, Japan and South Korea will meet in Washington next week to prepare for the next round of six-nation talks, Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Friday. Japanese and South Korean officials were unable to confirm the report.

In a move that could put a dampener on efforts to jump-start the nuclear talks, a Japanese ruling party politician said Tokyo would have no option but to raise the thorny issue of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.

"There is no way Japan is going to avoid the topic of the abductions at the six-way talks. Failing to raise the topic is not an option," said Shinzo Abe, secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Five abductees were flown to Japan in mid-October last year, supposedly to "temporarily" visit their homeland for the first time in a quarter of a century, and Japan decided later that month not to send them back. The move angered Pyongyang.

Japan insists that seven children of the abductees -- now in their teens and twenties -- be allowed to join their parents in Japan and that better information be provided about seven other abductees Pyongyang says died of illness, accidents or suicide.

Japanese officials have said China, which played a key role in persuading Pyongyang to agree to the first round of the six-way talks, would not want Tokyo to raise the abduction issue at the next round of the six-party talks.

Cho said the South Korean economy would be affected by North Korea's nuclear and economic policies.

If North Korea scrapped its nuclear weapons program and implemented economic reforms, chances of war in the region would recede, he said. "I expect that the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and simultaneous reform of North Korea toward an open economy would help eliminate the possibility of war in Northeast Asia," he said. "The painful scars of the Korean War have not been fully healed."

The nuclear crisis began in October 2002 when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted to having a covert weapons program despite having agreed earlier to freeze its atomic activities.

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