IGNORING international criticism of its nuclear weapons test, China has pledged to continue with its limited nuclear development programme at the top secret Lop Nor test site in the remote northwestern region of Xinjiang.
''China will continue to exercise the utmost restraint with regard to nuclear testing,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Wu Jianmin said in Beijing yesterday.
Mr Wu played down fears that China's underground test on Tuesday could trigger a new round of nuclear tests from other nuclear powers, saying how other countries managed their test programmes was ''their own business''.
Speaking at his weekly press briefing, Mr Wu reiterated China's commitment to the early conclusion of a comprehensive test ban treaty but again warned that such a treaty would be of little significance unless accompanied by a global agreement on the non-first-use of nuclear weapons.
''China maintains that parallel negotiations by all the nuclear powers on the conclusion of an international convention on the non-first-use of nuclear weapons and the non-use of nuclear weapons against nuclear free countries and zones are even more important [than a test ban treaty].'' ''China, out of all the nuclear powers, has taken the lead in this respect,'' Mr Wu said, adding that immediately after its first nuclear test in 1964, China gave a comprehensive guarantee that under no circumstances would it be the first to use nuclear weapons.
He went on to point out that of all the five nuclear powers, China's test programme was by far the most limited, amounting to just 39 tests in the past 29 years, compared with 942 by the United States since 1945.
While China has incurred the wrath of the Western powers for breaking the informal moratorium on nuclear testing suggested by the US, many independent observers said such criticism was unwarranted.