Premier Zhu Rongji promised here Thursday that the State Council will honor its commitments to guaranteeing the safety of Chinese children.

He made the remark at a press conference sponsored by the just-concluded Fourth Session of the Ninth National People's Congress.

In response to a question on an explosion at a primary school in east China's Jiangxi Province, that killed 42 pupils, Zhu said that the government would draw a lesson from the incident and emphasized, "We will never allow any student in our nation to engage in activities and work that will pose a danger to his or her life."

The premier also promised to improve and reaffirm relevant existing laws and regulations.

Zhu said that China is sure to enact a law under which the headof a city, a county and a village will be sacked immediately should such an incident happen. As for provincial governors, they will also be disciplined, he said.

Zhu once again conveyed his condolences to the victims of the incident and their families.

Zhu said that following the occurrence of the incident, the governor of Jiangxi rushed back from Beijing immediately and the Ministry of Public Security also sent a group of experts to conduct investigations at the scene.

He said the result was the same as what he had announced several days ago.

As for the fact that the overseas media did not agree with the explanation of the cause of the incident, Premier Zhu said that hehimself had required that Jia Chunwang, minister of public security, send a 6-member expert team to conduct an investigation on its own.

Premier Zhu said that the expert team reported that they found some clues, one of which is that that school did in 1999 ask some students to do some work for making fireworks. But that had been stopped last year following a fireworks explosion in Pingxiang, Jiangxi Province, Zhu said, citing a report by the expert team.

Premier Zhu also quoted the expert team as saying that no evidence pointing to production of fireworks was found at the scene.

Zhu emphasized that investigations into the case will continue.