The meeting most likely will be held from May 12 and is expected to last several days, the source said.

The government is trying to arrange bilateral talks with North Korea on its abduction of Japanese before or after the inaugural meeting of the group.

"The six countries are arranging to hold the first meeting of a working group around mid-May," Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said at the Foreign Affairs Committee session of the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

After North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed his willingness to contribute to progress in the six-way talks during summit talks in China last week, Beijing sounded out the six countries about holding the inaugural group meeting in mid-May. All countries, including Pyongyang, agreed on the time frame.

The meeting will be attended by subdelegates of the six countries, including Akitaka Saiki, deputy director of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau; Joseph DeTrani, US special envoy for peace on the Korean Peninsula; Cui Tiankai, chief of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Asian Affairs Bureau; and Li Gun, deputy director general of the North Korean US Affairs Bureau.

Ahead of the third round of six-way talks scheduled for June, the preparatory working group is expected to discuss specific North Korean facilities that should be frozen or abolished and also the "reward" that Pyongyang has been seeking in return for abandoning its nuclear arms development programme.

The government hopes to hold vice-ministerial and bureau-chief level meetings with North Korea before and after the bilateral meeting.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said at a regular news conference Wednesday that Japan and North Korea already have an agreement to hold bilateral talks as early as possible.