China has urged North Korea not to destabilise the Korean peninsula by testing a nuclear weapon. The only ally of Kim Jong Il's increasingly paranoid regime advised Pyongyang today to negotiate with the international community rather than "take actions that escalate tensions"."We hope that North Korea will exercise necessary calm and restraint over the nuclear test issue," said Liu Jianchao, the chief spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, in a short statement. Beijing remained conspicuous by its silence yesterday when North Korea said for the first time that it was planning to test a nuclear bomb. The threat, coming after months of sabre-rattling and a series of conventional missile tests in July, provoked an international outcry, with South Korea, Japan, Russia, France, Britain and Russia all expressing their concern.