Visiting U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday that U.S. experts will visit Japan next week to resume bilateral negotiations to break a deadlock over Japan's import ban on U.S. beef.
"I hope this consultation will be to reopen the market to U.S. beef in the near future," Cheney said in a speech at a Tokyo hotel. "It is an important issue from the standpoint of the U.S. and for U.S. producers. The Japanese market is an important one."
Japan banned imports on U.S. beef in December after the U.S. discovered its first case of mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Washington has pressured Japan to reopen its market, but Tokyo has refused to do so unless the U.S. undertakes beef testing for the disease.
Bilateral negotiations over removing the ban have been stalled since January. Even if negotiations resume, a gap still remains on the conditions.
Earlier in the day, farm minister Yoshiyuki Kamei said it would be "good to hold technical discussions between experts" of the two countries on U.S. beef.
But Kamei reiterated the government's stance that Japan wants the U.S. to carry out testing on all cattle to be slaughtered for human consumption, as Japan does.
