North Korea said Saturday it "feels no need" to sit down directly with Japan at revived six-country nuclear disarmament talks because Tokyo is insisting on discussing the North's past abduction of Japanese citizens.

North Korea's comments came as South Korea's top negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, left for Beijing to attend the talks, set to open Tuesday after being stalled for 13 months.

North Korea "feels no need to sit face-to-face with Japan, a black-hearted filibuster against the talks," official North Korean newspaper Minju Joson said in an editorial, criticizing Tokyo's intention to raise the abduction issue as a plan "to meet its own interests."

It was not clear from the editorial, carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, whether the North was refusing to attend the nuclear talks if they include Japan -- or saying it does not want to meet with Japanese officials on the sidelines of the talks, as Tokyo has desired.

"If the parties concerned are to bring into bloom a beautiful flower called the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, they should root out the poisonous plant harmful to it," the newspaper said, blaming Japan for lack of progress in the talks' previous rounds.

In Tokyo on Thursday, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's spokesman, Yu Kameoka, said Japan will still press the abduction issue despite the North's objections.

"It may be Japan has been saying things North Korea is not so happy to hear," Kameoka said. "But we will bring up the kidnapping issue."

North Korea has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese in the 1970s and '80s. In 2002 it allowed five to return to Japan, saying the other eight have died.

However, Japan has demanded proof of the deaths, as well as information on other missing Japanese believed to have been abducted by the North.

China has hosted three rounds of inconclusive six-country talks on North Korea's nuclear program since 2003. The negotiations involve Japan, China, the two Koreas, the United States and Russia.

In February, the North claimed it had nuclear weapons and has since taken steps that would allow it to produce more weapons-grade plutonium.

North Korea's delegation to the talks, led by Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, arrived in Beijing on Friday. The other delegates were expected to arrive over the weekend.