A Foreign Office spokesman said: "There is a team working across government on this kidnap issue".
Normalization talks broke down in 1992 over the kidnapping issue.
But the kidnapping issue ties into Japanese fears about spy boats from North Korea.
Optimistic analysts said Mr. Kim was coming clean on the nuclear issue, the same way he had tried to come clean on the kidnapping issue.
Japan has frozen all food aid to North Korea, partly because of the kidnapping issue, partly because of North Korea's nuclear bomb program.
At Police Headquarters in Port-au-Prince, the chief of the National Judicial Police, a tall, slender man named Frantz Termilus, sat in a meeting with his boss, the superintendent, discussing the city's nagging kidnapping issue.
Responding to the intense emotional focus of public opinion in Japan on the kidnapping issue, the Koizumi government has recently adopted a harder line, saying the 5 survivors among its 13 kidnapped citizens who are visiting Japan now would remain in the country indefinitely, rather than for the two weeks initially granted by Pyongyang.
Washington's insistence that its allies withhold economic cooperation with North Korea until security concerns are resolved has removed Japan's principal form of leverage in the talks here, causing North Korea to take a harder line on the kidnapping issue while urging the United States to negotiate with it directly.
After Ms. Gonzalez reported their disappearance, a felony warrant for kidnapping was issued for the father, Francisco Flores.
On Saturday, a little-known separatist group called the Baluchistan Liberation United Front claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and issued a set of demands.
"We have heard and read numerous stories about harassment, possible kidnapping and other issues happening with other competitors and we essentially wanted to give the rider the upper hand, if you are in distress mid trip, Ousta is here to step in," says El-Batrawi.
