Glyn Davies, the US special representative for North Korea policy, met with Chinese officials in Beijing on Friday as Pyongyang remained defiant over plans to conduct another nuclear test.
The envoy told reporters in Beijing that he had had wide-ranging discussions with Chinese officials on "all aspects of the North Korea issue" and they "achieved a very strong degree of consensus".
Both sides agreed that "a nuclear test would be troubling and a setback to the efforts to denuclearise the Korean peninsula", he said.
They also agreed that UN resolution 2087, passed earlier this week expanding sanctions against Pyongyang, was an "appropriate response and an important and strong response" to the North's rocket launch last month.
"We talked about the implementations of the UN Security Council resolution and the Chinese assured us that they would of course follow and implement that resolution, and we take them at their word," Mr Davies added.
As North Korea's main economic lifeline, China is seen as the only country with any genuine leverage over the impoverished, isolated and nuclear-armed state.
However, a day after Pyongyang declared it would go ahead with a third nuclear test as part of its "upcoming all-out action" against the United States, state officials railed against "big countries" - widely taken to mean China and Russia - that it had apparently expected to protect it against UN sanctions.
In a report carried by state media, Pyongyang's National Defence Commission dismissed the UN resolutions as "blind hand-raising by its member nations".
Pyongyang criticised countries that it claimed had abandoned elementary principles "under the influence of US arbitrary and high-handed practices, failing to come to their senses".
North Korea also threatened "physical countermeasures" against South Korea if it takes part in the UN sanctions against Pyongyang.
Pyongyang is apparently angry that China did not use its veto in the Security Council to block additional sanctions, although there are signs that Beijing is growing weary of its intransigent and nuclear-armed neighbour.
In an unusually frank warning on Friday, China's state-run media indicated that Beijing would decrease aid to Pyongyang if it goes ahead with an atomic test.
"If North Korea engages in further nuclear tests, China will not hesitate to reduce its assistance," the Global Times, which is close to China's ruling Communist Party, said in an editorial.
"China hopes for a stable peninsula, but it's not the end of the world if there's trouble there," it added.
Source : Telegraph
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