NEWARK, New Jersey (AP) - U.S. safety officials have ordered a New Jersey tire importer to recall as many as 450,000 tires that it bought from a Chinese manufacturer and sold to U.S. distributors.

Foreign Tire Sales Inc., of Union, New Jersey, said an unknown number of the light truck radials it imported since 2002 from Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co., of Hangzhou, China, could suffer tread separation, a problem that led to the largest tire recall in the U.S. in 2000.