It will be very difficult to sign an investment protection agreement in the next round of cross-Taiwan Strait talks scheduled for this month, Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-hsiang said Thursday. Taiwan was hoping to sign an investment protection agreement and a medical cooperation agreement with China this month in the next stage of cross-strait cooperation after the economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) between the two sides in June. 'The two sides could not agree on a mechanism for settling investment disputes and are still in talks on that aspect (of the agreement) , ' Shih said in a meeting of the Legislative Yuan's Economic Committee Thursday morning. 'It will be very difficult to seal the deal in this round of negotiations,' he said. Investment protection has been one of the major issues in the follow-up negotiations after the signing of the ECFA. Taiwan and China had agreed that substantial agreements on trade in goods and services, investment protection and dispute settlement should be signed within six months of the ECFA's implementation in September. With trade and investment activities across the strait growing amid warming bilateral ties, trade and investment disputes have also increased. According to the Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) , 3,969 complaints related to trade disputes have been filed by China-based Taiwanese businessmen from 1991 to September this year. The dispute settlement mechanism cannot be routed through the World Trade Organization (WTO) , which only deals with bilateral matters, or through the World Bank, because Taiwan is not a World Bank member, Shih said. The two sides failed to reach a consensus in the working group meetings on whether the mechanism should be included in the investment protection agreement, given that the mechanism will be regulated in one of the four follow- up agreements, Shih told legislators. 'It's more than likely that the mechanism will be established under the proposed Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Committee, ' which consists of government official from Taiwan and China designated to handle bilateral economic exchanges related to the ECFA, Shih said. The sixth round of cross-strait negotiation reportedly will be held from Dec. 16-17 in Taipei, but Shih and Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Deputy Chairman Kao Charng declined to confirm the date, during the interpellation session. The cross-strait negotiations are also known as Chiang-Chen talks because they are led by Taiwan's SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung and his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) President Chen Yunlin. 