Japan on Saturday refused to say when it would buy US beef again after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a personal appeal for it to resume imports stopped over fears of mad cow disease. Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said after talks with Rice that Tokyo would make a decision on buying beef at an "appropriate" time.
"We fully realise this issue has deeply concerned the United States and Japan has been working to resolve this issue," he said.
"We are doing all we can to stop this issue from harming Japan-US ties," Machimura told a joint news conference.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who has been directly lobbied on beef imports by US President George W. Bush, stressed that the trade row was only one issue between the close allies.
"She didn't just come here over beef," Koizumi told reporters after meeting the secretary of state. "Her name is Rice, not beef."
US members of Congress from farm states have called for trade sanctions against Japan, formerly the top overseas market for US beef, unless it resumes buying. Japan says it is waiting for its health experts to approve a way to ensure the meat is safe, a process which could take months.
A Japanese official said Machimura noted to Rice that the United States had not moved to lift its own ban on Japanese beef imposed over mad cow concerns.
According to the official, Rice told him that the US ban on Japanese imports was ""regrettable."
Rice said in a speech earlier in Tokyo about the beef ban: "The time has come to solve this problem."
"There is a global standard on the science involved and we must not let exceptionalism put at risk our ability to invest and trade our way to even greater shared prosperity," she said.
Japan suspended the multi-billion-dollar trade in December 2003 after a cow slaughtered in Washington state was found to have mad cow disease, which is linked to a fatal brain condition in humans.
Japan has screened every cow slaughtered for consumption since September 2001 when it became the only Asian nation to report mad cow disease among its domestic herds.
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