At what point of discussions or negotiations would DM be involved.

I don't really know if he'll have any involvement at all, but somewhere right before the feasibility results were released there was a company-wide blackout. I would imagine, just to be absolutely careful, they would also have a company-wide blackout during negotiations.

In the same way that it doesn't make rational sense for them to be able to issue themselves options while negotiations are going on, it makes sense that everyone should be blacked out at that time.

This is why it seems to me like they have not been negotiating. Of course, that could change tomorrow--who knows.