Further N-tests depend on US response: N Korea

North Korea will decide whether it would return to the stalled six-nation talks depending on how the US treats the communist state.

Whether North Korea conducts further nuclear tests depends on the United States' reaction, North Korea's number-two leader told Japan's Kyodo News agency on Wednesday.

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Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea's parliament, said his country would also decide whether it would return to the stalled six-nation talks on its nuclear programme depending on how the United States treats the communist state, Kyodo reported.

"If the United States continues to take a hostile attitude and apply pressure on us in various forms, we will have no choice but to take physical steps to deal with that," Kim told a Kyodo delegation in Pyongyang in the first comments by a top North Korean official since the country announced Monday that it had conducted its first nuclear test.