No more atom bombs: N. Korea

BEIJING, Saturday (AFP) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Russia today for more talks on North Korea after the secretive communist state reportedly said it would not conduct another nuclear test.

With Rice on a whistle-stop tour to rally regional support for recently imposed UN sanctions on Pyongyang, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il told a delegation from his main ally China that no more atom bomb tests were on the way.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a diplomatic source saying that Kim had told Chinese envoy Tang Jiaxuan, who visited Beijing on Thursday, of the decision.

Kim told Tang that North Korea has “no plan for an additional nuclear test,” the source said.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso also said he had unconfirmed information that the North would not carry out another test, while a South Korean newspaper said Kim had apologised for the first one.

North Korea announced it tested an atomic weapon for the first time on October 9, despite years of diplomatic efforts to get Pyongyang to give up its nuclear programme.

The UN Security Council then imposed sanctions on the regime, and Rice has so far visited Japan, South Korea and China for talks on how to implement the sanctions, which include international inspections of North Korean cargo.

The United States says it wants to prevent the North, part of US President George W. Bush's “axis of evil,” from transferring weapons of mass destruction and nuclear know-how to groups and governments hostile to the United States.

In addition to withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003, North Korea is also on the list of nations that have not joined an international treaty banning chemical weapons.

A US defence official said a North Korean ship carrying “cargo of a contraband-type nature” in defiance of the sanctions was currently at sea, but declined to give further details.

Rice has been urging nations to vigorously enforce the sanctions and take a hard line on Pyongyang.

But Tang, who met Rice in the Chinese capital on Friday, urged Washington to take a more “flexible” attitude.

“This is in the interests of all sides,” China's state Xinhua news agency quoted him saying.

China, the main provider of food and aid to impoverished North Korea, got the Security Council to scale down the US' original sanctions proposal and has resisted taking a hard line on cargo inspections.

But Rice, who also met Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing, said China was committed to strong enforcement, including preventing illicit materials from crossing the long border with North Korea.

“The Chinese made the point to us that they are scrupulous about that land border and intend to be scrupulous about that land border,” Rice told reporters accompanying her on the trip.

Tight controls on cargo flows across the 1,400-kilometer (880-mile) border are seen as critical to the sanctions, whose targets include trade in weapons of mass destruction and exports of luxury goods to Pyongyang's elite.

North Korea has repeatedly said it needs nuclear weapons to deter an attack by the United States.

It has described the UN sanctions as a “declaration of war” and threatened to act against any country that tries to enforce them.

Pyongyang walked out of six-nation talks on its nuclear programme last year after the United States took steps to block North Korea's access to international banks and choke its military's sources of hard currency.