TOKYO - JAPAN will extend sanctions against North Korea for another six months, the foreign minister said on Tuesday, as a six-nation deal on ending the communist state's nuclear drive looked on the brink of collapse.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party made the recommendation to the cabinet of conservative new Prime Minister Taro Aso, which will approve the extension in early October, a party official said.

The sanctions - imposed since North Korea tested an atom bomb in 2006 - include sweeping bans on all imports from the impoverished state and all port calls by North Korean registered ships.

'North Korea has stopped the denuclearisation process while moving to reactivate its nuclear plant,' said Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone.

'Under the current situation, we will have no other option but to extend the sanctions,' he told reporters.

Mr Nakasone said that North Korea also had not started a reinvestigation into its past abductions of Japanese civilians, a key issue for Japan.

In June, North Korea promised to open a new probe into the fate of the Japanese, whom the regime kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies in Japanese culture and language.

North Korea has suspended the process, saying it is waiting to see Japan's policy after the resignation of Mr Aso's predecessor Yasuo Fukuda, who was known for his conciliatory policies towards North Korea and other Asian nations.

Mr Fukuda had promised to lift some sanctions once North Korea started the investigation.

North Korea has announced moves to restart its plutonium reprocessing plant, upset that the United States has not taken it off a list of state sponsors of terrorism as promised under the six-nation deal. -- AFP