KIM JONG IL BACKS DOWN:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, meanwhile, was reported to have told a visiting Chinese delegation that the communist nation wasn’t planning more nuclear tests. . . .

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

Tang led a delegation that met Kim on Thursday in Pyongyang to deliver a message from Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Beijing on Friday, Tang said that his trip had “not been in vain.” Chinese officials also expressed hope that the North would return to arms talks that it has boycotted since last year in anger over U.S. financial restrictions.

While I’m disappointed that my plan to goad him into testing until he used up all his fissionable material has failed, I think this is good news. Is it because diplomacy worked? (Yay, Condi!) Or is it because his scientists told him there was no chance of a pulling off a successful test any time soon?