WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States and South Korea resumed high-level talks Tuesday on a US beef import deal that has provoked massive protests in Seoul, shaking the new conservative government.
Negotiators were scrambling to resolve the furor over the recent deal on US beef imports that could derail the US-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, signed a year ago but still unratified by either side.
US Trade Representative Susan Schwab and South Korean Trade Minister Kim Jong-Hoon were holding discussions at the USTR headquarters late Tuesday in Washington, USTR spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel told AFP.
Officials from both sides earlier restarted talks on technical issues begun Monday.
"The technical discussion this morning have ended. Ministers are currently meeting," Hamel said, declining to elaborate.
Public anger about the beef deal is rocking the administration of South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, who took office less than four months ago. His cabinet offered to resign last week over the unrest.
Tens of thousands of protesters have demonstrated in the past month over fears that US beef could be tainted with mad-cow disease.
Kim is seeking a voluntary agreement by exporters and importers to exclude older US cattle, backed by some form of government guarantee.
The agreement to resume the imports, suspended in 2003 after the discovery of the first US case of mad-cow disease, was reached in April.
But it has not gone into force due to the storm of Internet-fueled protests, which caught Lee's government by surprise.
A planned meeting Monday between Schwab and Kim was delayed because of unresolved technical issues, the two sides said. The two officials had held talks on Friday and Saturday.
A foreign ministry official in Seoul said Kim and Schwab held an "unofficial consultation" Monday afternoon at the request of the US side.
Schwab brought a revised proposal to that meeting, the South Korean news agency Yonhap quoted an unidentified Seoul official as saying.
"Although there are some improvements in the revised proposal, it is still far from our expectations," the official said without elaborating.
South Korea wants a voluntary ban by US exporters on the shipment of cattle aged over 30 months, which are seen as potentially more prone to the disease.
But sources quoted by Yonhap said negotiators were having difficulty agreeing on some form of government guarantee for the voluntary ban.
Both governments see the disease risk as virtually non-existent.
In announcing the US beef import deal on April 18, the South Korean assistant agriculture minister, Min Dong-Seok, said it initially would allow the import of most cuts of beef, including ribs which are currently banned, from cattle aged under 30 months.
Beef ribs accounted for more than half of all US beef imports before 2003.
Imports from cattle aged 30 months or older will also be allowed when the US applies stricter controls over protein-based feed feared to cause mad cow disease, Min said.
But some material deemed to carry a risk of spreading the disease will still be excluded and South Korea will still be allowed to suspend imports if there are serious violations of the rules or a new US mad-cow case is reported, he said.
South Korea was once the third largest market for US beef, with imports worth 850 million dollars a year before the 2003 ban.
Seoul eased the ban in 2006 but allowed only meat from cattle aged 30 months or younger. It also excluded bones and other materials deemed to carry a risk of spreading the disease.
Seoul has suspended imports several times since 2006 after discovering banned material in shipments. It effectively halted all imports in October 2007 after backbones were discovered.
Since 2003, two more mad-cow cases have been discovered in the United States, in 2004 and 2006.
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