The first substantive United States-North Korea talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapon ambitions have gone well but Washington would like Pyongyang to come clean about all its nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment programme, and resolve several other issues before the relations could be normalised.

After eight hours of high-level talks in New York with North Korean negotiator Kim Gye-gwan spread over two days, American Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill was upbeat though he agreed that they have still a lot of ground to cover before full normalisation of the relations between the two countries takes place.

Hill characterised the discussions as very good and said, "For now, we are on the right track."

He expects the working group on nuclear issues to start discussion next week in Beijing on what all North Korea needs to abandon. It will also look into overall nuclear programme of the North.

Officials said they the two delegations had discussed steps needed to take North Korea off the American list of sponsors of terrorism and establishment of full diplomatic relations.

Hill was optimistic that Pyongyang would meet its obligations under February 13 six-party agreement of shutting down its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon and invite United Nations inspectors back into the country within 60 days.

In return, North Korea would get 50,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil. Both sides, he said, are optimistic that they would meet full obligations under the agreement within the time limit set in the accord hammered out by the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia at the talks held on the initiative of Beijing.

The six are expected to meet March 19 to take stock of whether all obligations for the first 30 days had been met.

After the Yongbyon facility is closed down, all plutonium produced by it would placed under IAEA safeguard.

The foreign ministers of the six will meet in Beijing after 60-day period to discuss what has been achieved and the upcoming second phase as also replacing armistice with a peace treaty.

Technically, South and North Korea are still at war as no peace treaty has as yet been signed since the peninsula split into Communist North and American supported South.

In the long term, the six-party agreement provides that the North will irreversibly shut down all its nuclear related programmes in return for one million tons of oil or equivalent economic aid and normalization of relations with the United States.

It would provide full details of all its programmes, including any uranium enrichment, to the International Atomic Energy Agency and members of the six party talks.

In a speech at the Japan Society before he opened the talks on Tuesday, Hill said North Korea must make full disclosure of all its nuclear activities including its uranium enrichment plans, asserting the things that Pyongyang had been purchasing point in that direction.