KIM JONG IL, North Korea’s reclusive leader, has said that his country will conduct no more nuclear tests, less than two weeks after an underground blast propelled his isolated nation into the elite club of nuclear powers.

Details of Mr Kim’s remarks emerged during a day of hectic diplomacy in Beijing, where Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, held talks with leaders of the only country seen as possessing any leverage over its isolated Stalinist neighbour.

China’s top diplomats tried to steer a middle course in their public statements, endeavouring to appear even-handed in dealings with North Korea and the US. But signs of Beijing’s impatience at Mr Kim’s provocation were showing.

Mr Kim met Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan — a special envoy from President Hu Jintao and the first representative of an outside power to visit Pyongyang since the test — a day earlier. He told his visitor: “We have no plans for additional nuclear tests,” South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said.

He also said he was sorry about the nuclear test that had put his longtime ally in a difficult position and raised the possibility of a resumption of talks on the crisis after a year-long hiatus, a South Korean newspaper said.

“If the US makes a concession to some degree, we will also make a concession to some degree, whether it be bilateral talks or six-party talks,” the Chosun Ilbo daily quoted Mr Kim as saying.

That remark follows a pattern of policymaking by the North under which it makes a conciliatory remark or gesture and follows it up with new demands to try to draw concessions from its enemies. Pyongyang said that it was forced to carry out the test to protect itself from the US.

Highlighting North Korea’s stance that it needs a nuclear deterrent, more than 100,000 people held a rally yesterday in Pyongyang to hail the test. However, even China, Pyongyang’s ally from the Korean war, has begun to reduce its contacts, and has already cut food aid to the North by two thirds this year. It has increased inspections of lorries crossing into North Korea after joining the vote last week for UN sanctions to ban trade in military and luxury goods.

The four big state-owned Chinese banks and the British-owned HSBC said that they had stopped financial transfers to North Korea, which is likely to deal a blow to a weak economy that relies on China as a link to the world financial system.

Although exasperated, China is anxious about taking actions that could jeopardise the stability of its neighbour, fearing a wave of refugees if sanctions caused the North to collapse.

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