SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 16: Senior US and Chinese officials met Tuesday bidding to forge a comprehensive deal to regulate surging Chinese textile exports, which have exacerbated acute Sino-US trade tensions in recent months.

Trade officials from the two sides met at a San Francisco hotel for what was previously billed as a routine encounter to address US quotas slapped on a range of Chinese textile imports.

But the two-day meeting has been expanded as the United States seeks to emulate a deal reached by the European Union with China in June that averted a potential trade war over textiles.

David Spooner, the special negotiator for textiles in the US Trade Representative (USTR) office, led a nine-member team opposite a 13-strong Chinese delegation headed by Sun Jiwen, deputy director-general of the Department of Foreign Trade.

While the USTR’s firm intention is to negotiate a “broad textile agreement”, China has warned that the talks are likely to be hard-fought.

“Compared with the limited products involved in the Sino-EU talks, negotiations between China and the US will be tough,” Sun Huaibin, spokesman for the China National Textile Apparel Council, said Sunday.

“At this stage, without having settled on basic principles, detailed technical terms are difficult to finish.”

China and the EU eased their tensions when they agreed to limit the growth of 10 Chinese textile products to the EU to between 8.5 and 12.5 percent until the end of 2007.

No such agreement, however, has been struck between China and the United States, despite several rounds of talks.

The United States has instead imposed quotas on seven Chinese textile products and is considering introducing limits on another five.—AFP