Washington won't renegotiate import protoco with Taipei: Official

TAIPEI: The US beef import dispute has derailed Taiwan's plan to negotiate three critical accords with the United States that may help pave the way for a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA), a senior official said regretfully yesterday.

"The Legislative Yuan's passage of a controversial amendment to the Act Governing Food Sanitation has also obstructed resumption of talks under the Taiwan-US Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA)," said Francis Kuo-hsin Liang, "vice minister" of economic affairs.

Also yesterday, "Minister of Economic Affairs" Shih Yen-hsiang ruled out the possibility that the United States will renegotiate its beef protocol with Taiwan.

The only possibility for the two parties to discuss the matter will be through consultations based on the content of the protocol signed last October, he added.

Meanwhile, "vice economics minister" Lin Sheng-chung, said that since the US-Taiwan beef protocol is irreversible, Taiwan is obliged to follow it and allow imports of bone-in beef. As for ground beef and offal, which face strong resistance from the public, Taiwan will "seek understanding" from the US, he said.

The TIFA talks used to provide a good platform for regular dialogue between officials from both countries in the absence of formal diplomatic ties.

Such talks have been suspended since 2007 but were originally scheduled to resume early next month, Liang said in an interview with CNA.

However, Liang said the planned resumption of the talks in February has been postponed indefinitely after the legislature passed on Tuesday legislation that will ban imports of certain beef products from countries with documented mad cow disease cases over the past decade.

The US government has expressed grave concern about Taiwan's new legislation, which will effectively bar US ground beef, beef offal and other beef parts such as the skull, eyes and intestines from access to Taiwan's market, in contravention of a bilateral beef trade protocol signed by the two countries in October.

Liang, who concurrently heads the Office of Trade Negotiations under the "Ministry of Economic Affairs", said it is very regrettable that the beef trade issue has cast a pall on the extremely important Taiwan-US trade relations.

According to the government's plan, Liang said Taiwan had intended to first negotiate with the US a bilateral investment agreement (BIT) which, if struck, will help offset part of the possible adverse impact on Taiwan's industries once the US-South Korea free trade agreement takes effect.

China Daily/CNA

(HK Edition 01/08/2010 page2)