China urges North Korea not to take provocative action

China yesterday implicitly urged North Korea to refrain from taking any new action that would heighten regional tensions, on the 10th anniversary of a key agreement reached in multilateral talks in which Pyongyang promised to give up its nuclear ambitions.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi's warning at an academic seminar in Beijing comes amid hints by North Korea at its readiness to fire a long-range rocket next month, seen by other countries as a pretext for testing ballistic missile technology banned under UN resolutions.

"All parties of the six-party talks are members of the United Nations. We all have a shared responsibility to uphold peace and security on the Korean peninsula and implement UN Security Council resolutions," Wang said.

"We must not take any new action that could lead to tensions," Wang said, without directly naming any country.

The event was organised by a Chinese government-backed institute to mark the anniversary of the deal struck between the countries in the six-party talks - China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the United States - on September 19, 2005.

In the joint statement issued by the six countries, North Korea committed to "abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes" in exchange for economic assistance and security assurances. The US pledged it had "no intention to attack or invade" North Korea.