Backtracking

Is North Korea beginning to backtrack on its plans to conduct at least three additional nuclear tests? It certainly appears that way. Someone must have given Kim quite the talking to, and that would probably be China. He must have gotten quite an earful on how Kim was damaging China's plans for the region.

It is also curious that it did not take direct negotiations between North Korea and the United States to bring around this change of heart. Funny how that happened.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, meanwhile, was reported to have told a visiting Chinese delegation that the communist nation wasn't planning more nuclear tests.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency said more than 100,000 people gathered in Pyongyang's central Kim Il Sung square to "hail the success of the historic nuclear test."

North Korea conducted its first nuclear test on Oct. 9, drawing international condemnation and U.N. sanctions.

It was unclear why the celebration came only more than a week later.

Kim told Chinese envoy Tang Jiaxuan that "we have no plans for additional nuclear tests," Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unnamed diplomatic source in Beijing.

Tang led a delegation that met Kim on Thursday in Pyongyang to deliver a message from Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Beijing on Friday, Tang said that his trip had "not been in vain." Chinese officials also expressed hope that the North would return to arms talks that it has boycotted since last year in anger over U.S. financial restrictions.

Technorati: north korea, nuclear, nuclear weapon, fizzle, china, kim jong il, six party talks, bush, DPRK.