TOKYO: Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said a US decision to remove North Korea from a terrorism blacklist was "extremely regrettable," Japanese media reported Sunday.

"It's extremely regrettable, and I believe abductions amount to terrorist acts," Nakagawa told Japanese reporters in Washington at the Group of Seven meeting of finance ministers.

The State Department announced Saturday the United States had removed North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, saying an agreement had been reached on steps to verify Pyongyang's nuclear disarmament.

Japan has urged ally the United States not to delist North Korea, pressing first for more information on the fate of Japanese civilians kidnapped by the North in the 1970s and 1980s to train the hardline regime's spies.

Japan has taken the hardest line in the six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear programmes, negotiations that also involve the two Koreas, Russia and host China.

Ahead of the announcement on delisting, US President George W. Bush reassured Prime Minister Taro Aso in a telephone call that Washington will support Japan's position on the abduction issue, Japan's foreign ministry said.

Bush and Aso agreed during the 10-minute conversation on continued cooperation on disarming North Korea and on efforts to seek the fate of the Japanese civilians abducted by Pyongyang agents, the ministry statement said.