If North Korean officials can be believed, they already belong to the highly exclusive nuclear weapons club. And unless a startling breakthrough occurs, they may still be members even if six-nation talks curtail the future growth of their most dangerous arms programmes. North Korea's neighbours may have to accept the fact that Pyongyang owns a few atomic warheads and will not give them up, no matter what else is decided.
That is hardly the stated goal of negotiations chaired by China - with both Koreas, Japan and Russia also at the table - which have the US pushing hard to dismantle North Korea's nuclear programme completely and verifiably. These slow-moving talks, which appear likely to resume this month, are meant to give Pyongyang security assurances against possible US attack, plus access to more outside trade and aid. In return, North Korea is supposed to scrap its nuclear weapons - leaving the Korean peninsula a nuclear-free zone - and, in other ways, start acting like a normal nation.
But several things are not working out. For one, it is not certain that Pyongyang will surrender any existing weapons, no matter what peaceful pledges Washington has on offer. The country's leader, Kim Jong-il, so thoroughly distrusts the George W. Bush administration (the feeling is mutual) that he may insist on keeping a few weapons as a deterrent, even if he accepts tough restrictions against adding new ones. His gamble would be that the other negotiators - China above all - would reluctantly agree and force America to go along for the sake of an overall settlement.
This depends on something that neither American nor other analysts can predict with certainty. Specialists like Jack Pritchard, a former US negotiator who visited Pyongyang recently, are convinced that Mr Kim is ready to scrap the entire programme if the price is right, and he criticises the Bush team for stalling. But others disagree; they believe Mr Kim is determined to keep a small deterrent.
But does North Korea really have any nuclear weapons? The CIA has long assumed that Pyongyang has a weapon or two, and a London think-tank has concluded that this could expand to about 20 in a few years. But doubts remain. Sigfried Hecker, a former director of the American nuclear research laboratory at Los Alamos, was recently shown what the North Koreans called bomb-grade plutonium as proof that they have mastered the nuclear game. But he could not test the material and was not given any evidence that the North Koreans have solved the next vital steps - turning radioactive metal into weapons and building a delivery system. He compared it to claiming you can build cars because you know how to make steel.
Then there is the Chinese role. American intelligence specialists believe Beijing was deeply worried about Mr Kim's brinkmanship, especially after he tried to intercept a US reconnaissance plane. So they sent a delegation with an ultimatum: if you start a fight with America, we will not help, no matter what our 1961 mutual defence treaty says. Beijing then threw itself behind an intensified diplomatic effort to find a settlement.
