North Korea and Japan have agreed to resume bilateral talks stalled since the end of last year, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said on Tuesday. The news came a day after North Korea signed an agreement with parties to six-way talks on its nuclear weapons programme, but jeopardized the deal with a subsequent vow to keep its weapons until the United States provided civilian reactors. Machimura told reporters the talks would cover a range of bilateral issues including the nuclear issue and the abduction of Japanese citizens by Pyongyang decades ago, according to a report of Reuters.
