North Korea should honour disarmament pact-Bush

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, June 6 (Reuters) The United States and Japan expect North Korea to keep to an agreement to begin work on scrapping its nuclear weapons programme, US President George W Bush said today.

''We expect the North Koreans to honour agreements,'' Bush said, standing alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a G8 summit in Germany.

North Korea has demanded that once-frozen funds languishing in a Macau bank be transferred before it acts on February's agreement.

The 25 million dollars at Banco Delta Asia was blocked after the United States blacklisted the bank, accusing it of laundering illicit funds for the secretive communist state.

Abe expressed concern that North Korea had not taken any steps to implement the agreement.

''There is a limit to our patience,'' Japanese officials quoted him as saying to Bush during their bilateral talks on the sidelines of G8. Bush agreed, the officials said.

The two leaders also agreed that G8 should send a ''strong message'' to North Korea, Abe told reporters after the talks.

Abe had said earlier that this was one of his top priorities for the summit.

''With strong international cooperation, North Korea has fewer and fewer escape routes, and solving the problem will be its only way out,'' Abe told reporters ahead of the meeting.

''If North Korea ignores the problem, we should take a severe attitude,'' he said.

Bush also reiterated his support for Tokyo's stance on Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang.

North Korea admitted in 2002 to abducting 13 Japanese citizens in the late 1970s and early 1980s to train its spies.

Five of them were later allowed to return to Japan and North Korea has said the other eight are dead, but the Japanese government believes several others were also likely kidnapped and is demanding a fuller account for all.

REUTERS AM RK2225