Beijing: North Korea today (Sep 13, 2004) said the last week's blast in the country's Northern region was triggered to demolish a mountain to build a power plant and sought to put at rest speculations that it had conducted a nuclear test.

Last week's explosion in the country's Northern region was a part of a power plant project, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official told the Xinhua news agency in Pyongyang.

North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun had told visiting British Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell that the blast was conducted to demolish a mountain for the project, the official told the Chinese news agency, one of the very few countries to have media presence there.

In an interview with the BBC, Ramell said Paek told him that the blast was not a nuclear explosion but a deliberate detonation of a mountain as part of a hydroelectric project. Media was abuzz with stories of North Korea mulling over conducting nuclear tests and a South Korean news agency report of the September 9 explosion, coinciding with the country's foundation day, seemed to confirm the Western world's worst fears.

United States Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday (Sep 12, 2004) said the massive explosion near the Chinese border was not a nuclear explosion.

"It was no kind of nuclear event. We are trying to find out more about what exactly it was," he said adding the US was monitoring it very carefully.

North Korea had been threatening to pursue its secret nuclear weapons oriented programme in view of its standoff with the United States.