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N.Korea Said Not Planning New Nuke Tests

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- "North Korean leader Kim Jong Il said Pyongyang didn't plan to carry out any more nuclear tests and expressed regret about the country's first-ever atomic detonation last week, South Korean news reports said Friday.

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

Kim also told the Chinese that "he is sorry about the nuclear test," the mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo daily reported, citing a diplomatic source in China. The North Korean also raised the possibility the country would return to arms talks.

"If the U.S. makes a concession to some degree, we will also make a concession to some degree, whether it be bilateral talks or six-party talks," Kim was quoted as telling a Chinese envoy, the newspaper reported.

Reports that retail giant Wal-Mart threatened to move it's child-slave-labor-garment manufacturing facilities from China if the government did not take an active role in dissuading North Korea from further nuclear testing, have not at this point in time been verified. Rumors that several members of the Walton family had been spotted traveling through Cuba had kindled interest in the possibility that the company might be looking for another communist dictatorship to do it's bidding, but China remains adament that there simply is no place else to go when needing space, disposable workers, and virtually no health and safety regulations that might in any way, shape, or form, slow down production.

State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan added that North Korea would never ever not in a scazillion years think of using a nuclear weapon against the Chinese, so any and all manufacturing done by outsiders wishing to skirt the basic tenets of human rights were safe and would remain so.