BEIJING: For three consecutive days in recent weeks, something remarkable happened to the oil pipeline running through northeast China to North Korea — the oil stopped flowing, according to diplomatic sources, temporarily cutting off a vital lifeline for North Korea.

The pipeline shutdown, officially ascribed to a technical problem, followed an unusually blunt message delivered by China to its longtime ally in a high-level meeting in Beijing last month, the sources said. Stop your provocations about the possible development of nuclear weapons, China warned its neighbour, or face Chinese support for economic sanctions against the regime.

Such tough tactics show an unexpected resolve in Beijing’s policy toward Pyongyang, and hint at the nervousness of Chinese leaders about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and North Korea’s tensions with the United States.

With the Bush administration asking China to take a more active role, Beijing’s application of pressure could convince North Korea to drop its demands for talks exclusively with the United States — a demand that Washington rejects.

Forceful diplomacy is not the norm in China’s dealings with North Korea, a trying friend at the best of times.

China fought side by side with the North against the US in the Korean War, and currently supplies substantial food aid and most of the oil North Korea needs to sustain itself. Now, China is concerned that a nuclear-armed North Korea would destabilize the region, analysts said.

Chinese officials have taken great care not to publicly criticize Pyongyang, other than to repeat their opposition to nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula and urge all sides not to take any action that might heighten tensions.

Discerning what Chinese officials tell the North Koreans in private is difficult at best. North Korea is perhaps the most isolated and closed regime in the world, and Chinese officials have repeatedly declined to make any comments about the specific content of their talks with their North Korean counterparts.

But two sources — both veterans in diplomacy with North Korea — said that last month, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi met in Beijing with North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun and made a strikingly candid plea for Pyongyang to curtail its provocative behaviour. If Pyongyang did not, Wang told Paek, China might drop its longstanding position against sanctions.—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.