For a diplomat who reportedly does not like to fly — no-smoking cabins cut into his nicotine habit – Wu Dawei, China’s special representative for Korean Peninsula affairs, has been a busy man.

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Mr. Wu visited Washington last week, and now he is in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, presumably conveying what he learned about the Obama administration’s requirements for a return to negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Washington has made clear that it wants concrete steps by North Korea on denuclearization – such things as a freeze in uranium production and inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency – before it will consider a new round of six-party talks. The talks, which involved the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, fell apart in 2009.



Beijing, however, wants to jump-start talks with North Korea without such preconditions, and Mr. Wu met with Washington officials to try to persuade the United States to return to the talks. Washington told Mr. Wu that would not be possible under the current circumstances.

Can Mr. Wu bridge the difference between Washington and Pyongyang? Will he be able to find out what the North Koreans might be prepared to do to satisfy Washington?

In the short term, that seems unlikely, although, since President Obama and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, met in California last summer, Washington appears to be putting great store in using China as the broker that can best nudge North Korea forward.

China has gotten tougher with North Korea, but not tough enough to elicit moves that would meet the Obama administration’s demands, said a senior administration official, who declined to be named in keeping with protocol.

The administration is convinced that North Korea, which conducted a third nuclear test this year, has no interest in scrapping its nuclear arsenal. North Korea keeps reminding the world that it considers itself a nuclear state, and that its “military-first” policy requires that most of its resources go to its armed forces.

With that in mind, the United States has enhanced its missile defenses in northeastern Asia, a buildup that brings these weapons closer to China, a situation distasteful to Beijing. For Washington, the stepped-up missile defenses can be used as leverage with China to pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

The logjam has not deterred efforts outside official channels to ease a path back to six-party talks.

Two former American negotiators, Stephen Bosworth and Robert L. Gallucci, recently attended meetings in Berlin and London where North Korean officials were present. The pair then wrote an op-ed piece saying that the Obama administration should abandon its hard-line posture and reopen talks with North Korea. That argument has gotten little traction inside the White House, the senior administration official said, where it is seen as having been overtaken by developments.

Another former American official, Evans J.R. Revere, agreed in a paper for the Brookings Institution with the pessimistic conclusion of Mr. Bosworth and Mr. Gallucci that in the absence of dialogue there was little to prevent North Korea’s development of more and better nuclear weapons. But Mr. Revere counseled a different tack. Now is not the time to join talks with North Korea, he wrote. Washington should get tougher with North Korea, and stop relying so much on China, whose interests overlap but are not identical with those of the United States.

Still, some are encouraged by the recent comings and goings over North Korea, especially since Mr. Wu is on his second visit to Pyongyang in three months. On Wednesday, South Korean and Japanese officials also met in Washington with Glyn T. Davies, the United States special representative for North Korea.

Roger Cavazos, a former United States Army intelligence officer and North Korea watcher who is now with the Nautilus Institute, a group that studies international security issues, said, “The point is: Wu Dawei talks with North Korea in August, North Korea then talks with U.S. interlocutors” — Mr. Bosworth and Mr. Gallucci — “U.S. interlocutors back-brief the State Department, then State gives their answers to Wu, and Wu is now in North Korea relaying American answers/concerns.”

All this movement bears resemblance to “a Ferris wheel with lots of up and down — lots of movement, but not getting anywhere,” Mr. Cavazos said. But on a more positive note, “This particular iteration may be the point at which the participants get off the Ferris wheel and meet again – or at least that is the hope.”