TOKYO, July 31 Kyodo - Japan has been working with the United States to join a U.N.-led nuclear inspection team for North Korea, assuming Pyongyang agrees to accept the inspection team at the six-nation talks, sources close to Japan-U.S. relations said Friday. The Japanese government recognizes the need to be aggressively involved in the inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency at North Korea's Yongbyong nuclear complex because it faces a ''nuclear threat,'' according to the sources.

The move signals Japan's efforts in playing an active role in North Korea's denuclearization process, instead of just trusting the United States and other global nuclear powers, they said. Japan is considering sending government and private-sector nuclear experts.

In June, Japan and the United States stressed the need for an IAEA inspection at the third round of the six-nation talks held in Beijing, also attended by Russia, China, North Korea and South Korea.

North Korea agreed to discuss inspections in the multilateral talks but opposed a survey by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

The sources also said Japan and the United States had agreed to form an inspection framework involving Japanese experts last week when they held a working-level meeting in Washington.

The United States, Japan and South Korea have called for the North's ''complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.''

However, the Japanese government is not considering sending its experts to North Korean facilities related to producing and storing nuclear weapons.

''Japan, which has no nuclear weapons, would breach the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by accessing any information related to the design and production of nuclear weapons through inspections,'' one Japanese Foreign Ministry official said.

Japan is now considering joining inspections on an experimental graphite-moderated North Korean reactor, believed to have been used to produce plutonium-based nuclear weapons, as well as a facility for uranium enrichment, the sources said. July 31, 2004 02:14:02