TOKYO - NORTH Korea and Japan have agreed terms for a new investigation into Pyongyang's abduction of Japanese people in the 1970s and 1980s, Japanese media reported, opening the way for Tokyo to lift some travel sanctions.

The deal, hammered out early on Wednesday after two days of talks in China, would see North Korea complete the investigation in the next few months, with Japanese given access to documents, interviews and to related sites to verify the results, Kyodo news reported.

Once an investigation committee started work, Japan would allow chartered flights between the two countries and lift restrictions on visits between the two countries, Kyodo quoted Japanese negotiator Akitaka Saiki as saying.

'This committee will carry out the investigation in a quick manner and will, as much as possible, finish it by this fall,' the news agency quoted him as telling reporters.

The dispute over the fate of 17 Japanese abducted to help train spies in Japan's language and culture is an emotional issue for many Japanese and a major obstacle to establishing diplomatic ties between the two wary neighbours.

North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents had abducted 13 Japanese, including a 13-year-old girl, Megumi Yokota, snatched on her way home from school in 1977.

The admission sparked outrage in Japan. Five of the abductees returned home that year but Pyongyang says the others, including Yokota, are dead.

Tokyo wants more information about the eight and four others it says were also kidnapped, and wants any survivors sent home. Families campaigning for missing loved ones say many others may have been taken.

Japan, along with China, Russia, the United States and South Korea, has been negotiating with North Korea to end its nuclear weapons ambitions.

As part of that process, Washington is preparing to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, a move many in Japan fear would lessen Tokyo's chances of settling the feud over the abductions.

Tokyo insists it will not provide energy as part of a multilateral deal aimed at ending the secretive communist state's nuclear programmes unless the abduction issue is settled. -- REUTERS