Escalating a rare conflict in U.S.-Japanese relations, President Bush pressed Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi yesterday to lift the Japanese ban on U.S. beef imports, but Koizumi gave no assurances when they could restart, U.S. and Japanese officials said.
Japan's 14-month beef ban, imposed after a cow in Washington state was found to have mad cow disease, has closed off the single largest foreign market for the $30 billion U.S. cattle industry, affecting a politically important constituency.
 
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Shortly before the U.S. presidential election, Japanese and U.S. officials announced they had reached a "framework" agreement, with U.S. officials predicting that some American beef shipments to Japan would resume quickly. But Japanese analysts at the time derided the agreement as a political favor by Koizumi to Bush, who had the financial support and endorsement of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.
Now, U.S. officials are becoming increasingly irritated at delays in restarting imports.
"It's an important issue. Obviously we would like to see the market opened up," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with Bush to Ohio. "It's something we're continuing to discuss with the Japanese government."
During a meeting with her Japanese counterpart in Washington last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice devoted nearly half of a 40-minute session to the beef dispute, which has affected about $1.7 billion in annual imports. She plans to raise the issue again when she travels to Japan next week, a senior State Department official said.
State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher announced yesterday that Rice will travel to South Asia, including India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and also East Asia, including China and South Korea in addition to Japan. The crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions is expected to dominate the discussions in East Asia, officials said.
Several sources said Deputy Secretary Robert B. Zoellick, the former U.S. trade representative, has become especially annoyed at the delays in the beef issue and pressed for a quick resolution.
A senior Japanese official said that during a 15-minute phone call yesterday, Koizumi told Bush he would do his best because he did not want the issue to affect U.S.-Japanese relations. But Koizumi said he could not say when beef imports would begin. He explained that the issue is largely out of the hands of the Japanese government, which is relying on an independent food safety commission to determine whether a tentative agreement with the United States meets safety standards.
"We can't force this issue," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity. "It would look like we are compromising the people's health in deference to the U.S.-Japanese relationship."
The State Department official said the Bush administration believes Koizumi could persuade the commission to finish its work quickly. "He shouldn't let them tool this," he said.
Japanese consumer groups have argued that the guidelines at U.S. slaughterhouses, which usually do not keep birth certificates of cattle, are not as stringent as those in Japan. One sticking point between the United States and Japan is how to determine that beef is coming from slaughtered U.S. cattle less than 20 months old. That age limit was set because it is the earliest age at which Japanese testing on domestic herds has detected mad cow disease.
