Beijing, June 20 (AP): A Chinese official in charge of wildlife conservation has said an international ban on trade in tiger parts for traditional medicine will not last forever, a state-run newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The ban, in place since 1993, has been credited with stopping a wave of killings of tigers in the wild.

At a meeting last week in the Netherlands of the international body regulating wildlife trade, China failed to block a resolution urging it to maintain the ban and warning it to rein in its program of breeding tigers.

``The ban is in place,'' Wang Wei, deputy director of the department of wildlife conservation of the State Forestry Administration, was quoted as saying by the China Daily.

``But the issue is open for review. ... The ban won't be there forever, given the strong voices from tiger farmers, experts and society,'' Wang said.

When China shut down its domestic trade in tiger parts 14 years ago, it imposed stiff sentences on offenders and ordered pharmacies to empty their shelves of tiger medications, believed to cure ailments from convulsions to skin disease and to increase sexual potency.

The successful program helped stem a slew of killings across Asia, where wild tigers face extinction, though poaching continues to feed a black market.

But the government is now thought to have come under pressure from businessmen to allow farm-bred tiger products back onto the market. The first tiger farms started before the ban, but others sprang up afterward because speculators thought it would be temporary.

The newspaper said about 5,000 tigers are now bred in captivity in China. Conservationists say globally there are about 5,500 tigers remaining in the wild.

Farm owners say legal products would help eliminate the illicit trade, and that revenues could go toward conservation projects.

Conservationists say that permitting farmed tiger parts to be sold would spur poaching because it is cheaper to kill a wild animal than to raise a tiger on a farm and the parts are indistinguishable.