WASHINGTON (Kyodo) Japan and the United States remained at odds at a high-level meeting Friday on getting Tokyo to relax its criteria for American beef imports, a Japanese official said.

The one-day economic dialogue, which also covered energy security, intellectual property rights and global trade liberalization, was aimed at laying the groundwork for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to the U.S. set for April 26 and 27.

The U.S. team urged Japan to ease its mad cow disease-related controls on imports once a global animal disease watchdog officially approves the safety status of U.S. beef in May as widely anticipated, the official said.