U.S. and North Korean officials opened a second day of talks Friday, February 24 on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme after both sides said the negotiations the day before were positive, M&C reported citing DPA.

Glyn Davies, the U.S. special envoy for North Korea policy, said Thursday's talks in Beijing were “substantive and serious and covered quite a number of the issues.”

The two sessions on the first day, which lasted a total of five and half hours, were the first talks between the two nations since the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in December.

Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, who led the North Korean delegation, also said Thursday's talks were “positive,” South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

Davies declined to give details of the issues discussed Thursday, confirming only that U.S. food aid to North Korea “did come up” during the talks.

Before the talks, he said the United States wanted to use them to “find out what the new leadership in North Korea is prepared to do” towards fulfilling promises to end its nuclear weapons programme under a 2005 six-nation agreement.

He said U.S. officials hoped to find out if the new North Korean leadership under Kim Jong Il's son Kim Jong Un was “prepared to pick up where we left off” after two bilateral meetings in New York in July and Geneva in October.

Host nation China is keen to restart negotiations on Pyongyang's nuclear programme involving North Korea, the United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. Those talks have been stalled since the end of 2008.