DHAKA: Japan and North Korea on Sunday held the first formal government-level talks in more than a year following a shift in Pyongyang’s handling of past abductions of Japanese citizens.

The two-day meeting in Beijing came after diplomats held informal talks on the sidelines of a humanitarian conference in the Chinese city of Shenyang between Red Cross officials from the two countries earlier this month.

‘We would like to have serious and frank discussions over a broad range of outstanding issues for both sides,’ Junichi Ihara, head of the Japanese foreign ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, told Japan’s NHK public broadcaster, reports The Straits Times.

‘We would like to make efforts so as to make progress towards solving those issues.’

BDST: 1620 HRS, MAR 30, 2014