Even as North Korea moves to take back hard-won concessions on its nuclear program, U.S. President George W. Bush's administration is hoping to salvage a crumbling international effort to get the communist state to give up nuclear arms.

While admitting the situation is dire, especially after Pyongyang took yet another step Sept. 22 to restart its atomic reactor, officials say the talks are not dead, and have survived troubled fits and starts before.

Over the next week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet her counterparts in the negotiations — China, Japan, South Korea and Russia — to discuss possible routes ahead despite North Korea's apparent unwillingness to remain a part of the process.