Ahead of their landmark talks Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il greeted Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, saying that he was glad that the Japanese leader was visiting Pyongyang again with a desire to normalize relations between the two countries.

Koizumi was accompanied at the conference table by Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masaaki Yamazaki, Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka and Mitozi Yabunaka, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.

Kang Sok-ju, the first deputy foreign minister, was the only North Korean official to sit in next to the North Korean leader at the meeting.

Koizumi was earlier met at the airport by North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong-il, a step that was considered a few steps below the standard welcoming protocol for a head of state. The Seoul-based Yonhap news agency said the North's low-key welcome reflected the tense relationship between the two neighboring countries over the abduction and other touchy issues.

Upon his arrival during his first trip to the communist nation in 2002, the Japanese leader was greeted on the tarmac by the North's ceremonial head of state, Kim Yong-nam.

In his first meeting with Koizumi in 2002, Kim acknowledged under pressure that the North's agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to train communist spies in Japanese culture and language.