SUDDENLY the pace of moves on the diplomatic chessboard has picked up. Last week, at the third round of six-country talks in Beijing to try to settle the North Korean nuclear issue, the United States, egged on by South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, set out its proposals for what North Korea would receive in return for the complete and speedy dismantling of its nuclear programmes. North Korea said it found “some common elements” but really “little new” in these. Nonetheless, there was much speculation that at this week's meeting in Jakarta of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), an annual regional security dialogue, foreign ministers of the six would be huddling here and there in different combinations over next moves.

Two years ago, America's Colin Powell had a ground-breaking 15-minute chat at the ARF with his North Korean counterpart, Paek Nam-sun. But coffee talk was soon overtaken by the latest nuclear crisis. In October 2002, America presented North Korea with evidence that it was breaking a 1994 deal designed to end its nuclear moonlighting, using plutonium, by starting up a second, uranium-based route to a bomb. In the ensuing fracas, North Korea turfed out international inspectors and walked out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Last year Mr Paek was “too busy” to show his face at the ARF. This year there is not only America's latest proposal to discuss, but also burgeoning ties with South Korea, progress in settling the cases of several Japanese citizens that North Korea abducted in the past, and rumoured trips in the offing by North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, to Russia and China.

But in the face-off between America and North Korea, all this activity does not bring the nuclear issue any closer to resolution. America still insists that North Korea dismantle all its nuclear programmes, the uranium one included. North Korea still denies publicly that it has a uranium programme (despite originally acknowledging privately that it had).

Last week America did drop the term “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement”, which seems only to enrage North Korean officials. And it called for the North to give up its uranium “technology”, rather than its “programme”, in the hope that this would prompt the North Koreans to own up, especially since a Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has admitted selling them the necessary equipment.

If North Korea were to freeze all its nuclear activities, America says it would have no objection to the neighbours, particularly South Korea, providing needed oil and electricity; America itself would offer a provisional guarantee of no hostile intent. Then North Korea would have three months to account for its nuclear programmes and agree to their swift dismantlement before other benefits would flow.

North Korea is unlikely to agree to this when the six-party talks reconvene sometime before the end of September. It might eventually disarm, argues Gary Samore, a former negotiator with North Korea now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank, but only in stages that it could control. And it would probably seek to keep a nuclear hedge: if it gave up its uranium programme, it would want to keep the plutonium it has already produced in the country, under inspection, giving itself an option to build more bombs quickly (it is thought to have at least two already).

North Korea may be hoping for a deal more to its liking if John Kerry wins America's presidential election in November. Meanwhile, George Bush is in no rush either. He has scotched criticism from allies and Mr Kerry alike by showing that he is negotiating seriously. He has not yet sacrificed anything in the nuclear game with North Korea, and maybe gained a little.