The third-day talks of the fifth-round Sino-US textile negotiation ended in Washington Wednesday.

The negotiation, which started on Monday, was scheduled to end Tuesday but was extended to a third day to give both sides more time to narrow their differences.

David Spooner, special textile negotiator for US Trade Representative's Office (USTR), declined to comment on the results of Wednesday's discussion.

But the USTR said in a brief statement on Tuesday that "We have made good progress in our discussions over the past couple of days and, although we still have differences, we feel that additional time to work on the issues would be beneficial."

Earlier, Sun Huaibin, spokesperson for the China Textile Industry Council, also said it is of little hope to reach agreement in the fifth round of textile talks.

China's textile industry wishes for an early agreement between the two countries so as to reduce losses caused by uncertainties, Sun said.

Following the elimination of the global textile quota on January 1, 2005, the US claimed that the surge of textile imports from China had disrupted its domestic market.

Since May this year, the US government has put all kinds of restrictive measures against 21 categories of Chinese textile products, arousing strong objection from China.

The two countries have held four rounds of textile talks, with no substantive agreement reached.

(Xinhua News Agency September 29, 2005)