The U.S. government says the ball is in North Korea’s court over whether the two nations hold a third round of bilateral talks within the year.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a daily news briefing on Tuesday, local time, that the year in diplomacy is not yet over, but she doesn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up that talks will be realized by the end of the year. Nuland said she was not prepared to speculate on the timing of such talks one way or the other.

However, the U.S. and North Korea are known to be discussing conditions for holding a third round of bilateral talks, such as the North’s preliminary denuclearization actions and U.S. provision of food aid to the communist country.