North Korea: Future nuclear tests 'hinge on US'

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has told a Chinese envoy his country has no immediate plans to conduct another nuclear test but that US policy towards Pyongyang will determine the future, a report says.

Kim made the remarks to Chinese envoy Tang Jiaxuan during talks last week in Pyongyang to discuss the North's first nuclear test on October 9, Japan's Kyodo News agency reported from Beijing, citing unnamed officials familiar with the discussions.

Kim told Tang that while there was no plan to hold a second nuclear test for the moment, North Korea would have to respond if the US continued to pressure the country, according to Kyodo.

In Seoul, South Korean nuclear envoy Chun Yung-woo said he had no information on whether North Korea would conduct a second nuclear test and that there was no indication the North was interested in resuming disarmament talks.

Kim reiterated that US financial sanctions were an obstacle to the six-way talks on the North's nuclear programme and that Pyongyang could return to the talks - stalled since last November - if the sanctions were lifted, Kyodo said.

Washington says the financial restrictions, imposed in September 2005, are unrelated to the six-party negotiations.

US assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill was in Hong Kong yesterday for talks on North Korean bank accounts in neighbouring Macau that were frozen under the US restrictions, according to a spokesman for the US Consulate General.

The US banned transactions between Macau-based Banco Delta Asia and American financial institutions in September 2005, characterising the bank as a "willing pawn for the North Korean government" and alleging that its clients were involved in smuggling and counterfeiting for North Korea.

North Korea has denied the claims and has made the lifting of the freeze a pre-condition for its return to the nuclear talks.

Kyodo also said Kim told China that the North would adhere to a 1992 treaty signed by South and North Korea to keep the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons, according to the wishes of his late father, Kim Il Sung.

The 1992 non-nuclear agreement specified that neither South nor North Korea were to make, possess, test or deploy nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang - which also drew international condemnation with a series of missile tests in July - has long insisted its nuclear programme is necessary to deter a possible US invasion, and that having atomic weapons enhances regional stability by putting it on equal terms with Washington.