New US-China talks on textiles announced
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-09-16 07:30

WASHINGTON - The US government said it will hold a new round of negotiations with China on an agreement to regulate textiles trade here on September 26-27.

A vendor measures cloth at a textile market in Beijing. The US government said it will hold a new round of negotiations with China on an agreement to regulate textiles trade here on September 26-27.[Reuters]

The delegations will be led by David Spooner, the chief US negotiator on textiles trade, and by Lu Jianhua, director general at China's Department of Foreign Trade, the US Trade Representative office said.

The new meeting comes after US-Chinese textile talks in Beijing ended in acrimony just over a fortnight ago. The Beijing talks were the fourth in a series since global quotas on textiles trade were scrapped on January 1.

The United States wants an overarching agreement to control the flow of textiles from China, which have inflamed trade tensions between the two countries.

A coalition of industry organisations filed petitions Thursday with the US government demanding the renewal of nine quota safeguards covering 16 categories of Chinese textile imports through to the end of 2006.

The US quotas were due to expire at the end of this year, but industry officials said there was no hope of China taking their protests seriously after the talks in Beijing last month failed to achieve a breakthrough.

Cass Johnson, president of the National Council of Textile Organizations, said the safeguards need to be renewed "because China is refusing to negotiate seriously on a comprehensive bilateral agreement".

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