China cancels troop leave at N Korea border

Dandong (China), Oct 10: China has cancelled leave for troops along at least part of the border with North Korea, a mainland-controlled Hong Kong newspaper reported today, a day after the North announced a nuclear test.

The Wen Wei Po said Chinese People's Liberation Army troops ranged along the border in northeast China's Jilin province ''have had leave totally cancelled'' and some forces were conducting ''anti-chemical'' training exercises.

A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, Liu Jianchao, said he had heard nothing about the reported border troop move.

''The China-North Korea border is normal. There's nothing unusual,'' he told a regular news briefing today in Beijing.

Trains across the border bridge at Dandong appeared to be running normally today.

Officials and businessmen in Dandong, a bustling Chinese border city that looks across the Yalu River to North Korea, told Reuters on Monday that traffic across a bridge between the two countries would halt today except for special official cars.

A customs official said the main customs posts on the North Korea-China border would shut to most traffic today, restricting one of the isolated North's key portals to the outside world.

It was unclear whether the moves were prompted by Pyongyang's reported nuclear test on Monday and the strikingly sharp condemnation it drew from China, its longtime partner and aid-provider.

Beijing condemned the test as ''brazen'' and President Hu Jintao warned the North and other powers not to escalate the crisis.

In a phone call with US President George W Bush, Hu warned North Korea ''not to take any more actions that may worsen the situation'', according to the official Xinhua news agency.

But Hu, who was feted as a friend of North Korea when he visited late last year, said there was still room for negotiations to end North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions.

''China has consistently advocated denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and opposed nuclear proliferation, arguing for peaceful settlement of the Korean nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiation,'' Hu said.

The communist neighbours and long-time allies share a 1,400-km border. In past years one of the main tasks of the Chinese border forces has been stopping North Korean refugees crossing into China, where they seek work or asylum in other countries.

Chinese commentators left no doubt that North Korea's nuclear announcement had badly bruised relations.

''North Korea's holding of a nuclear test has offended China and put China in a very awkward diplomatic spot,'' Xu Guangyu of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association told Ta Kung Pao, a Beijing-backed Hong Kong paper, today.

Reuters