Taipei, Jan. 25 (CNA) The current environment is not conducive for the United States and Taiwan to hold a new round of high-level Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) talks, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has said.
"We had been hoping to resume high-level talks of our TIFA Joint Council early this year. However, we do not believe that the current environment is conducive to holding productive high-level discussions, " said Nkenge Harmon, deputy assistant U.S. trade representative for public and media affairs, in an e-mail received on Tuesday.
The TIFA is an official framework for Taiwan-U.S. dialogue on trade and economic issues in the absence of diplomatic ties. TIFA talks have been suspended since 2007 mainly because of a controversy over beef imports from the U.S.
The two countries had hoped to resume the suspended negotiations in the last week of January.
The U.S. decided to postpone the talks, however, when Taiwan blocked some shipments of U.S. beef after finding that they contained residues of ractopamine, an animal feed additive banned in Taiwan that promotes leanness.
Economic Affairs Minister Shih Yen-shiang said Monday that the resumption of talks were "still under negotiation" by the two sides.
Premier Wu Den-yih said Sunday that he hoped the dispute over ractopamine would not impede the progress and the agenda of the TIFA talks because the framework agreement would be beneficial to both sides.
The USTR office did not comment on whether the ractopamine issue was related to progress on the resumption of TIFA negotiations.
"The United States remains committed to enhancing bilateral trade relations with Taiwan, " Harmon wrote. "We will continue our ongoing engagement with Taiwan on the full range of important bilateral trade and economic issues and we will consider the matter of when to resume high-level TIFA talks."
A spokesman for the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the U.S. representative office in Taiwan in the absence of bilateral diplomatic ties, urged Taiwan on Jan. 15 to adopt a Maximum Residue Level (MRL) standard for the drug used by other countries, including the U.S., Australia and South Korea. (By Chris Wang) enditem/ls