North Korea to honour 'anti–nuclear agreement'

In what may come as a big relief to Japan and South Korea, North Korean leader Kim Jong–Il has promised to stick to a 1992 agreement to keep the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons.

According to Japanese and South Korean media reports, Kim made the pledge to visiting Chinese envoy Tang Jiaxuan last week.

Kim told Tang that honouring the joint declaration by the two Korean nations was a "dying instruction" of his father and the country's former leader Kim Il–Sung, Japan's Kyodo and South Korea's Yonhap news agencies said.

The statement led Chinese officials to conclude that North Korea was not planning a second nuclear test, South Korea's Yonhap reported.

However, Japanese officials remained apprehensive about Kim's latest remarks, given the North's track record of not keeping its promises.

Meanwhile, US, which is bracing itself to respond to North Korea's threat of testing another nuclear bomb, has refused to comment anything on the latest stand taken by the maverick despot, Kim.