NEW YORK — A federal judge on Monday rejected a $33 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bank of America, saying the SEC's accusations of inadequate disclosure by the bank over bonuses paid at Merrill Lynch must now go to trial.

Separately, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office is preparing to file charges within the next couple of weeks against several high-ranking executives at Bank of America, claiming they failed to disclose details about the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

The ruling in the SEC case comes one month after the agency and Bank of America thought they had put a thorny issue behind them, and leaves the SEC with the task of mounting a case against BofA over one of the most sensitive issues of the financial crisis — executive pay on Wall Street.

The SEC announced last month that it had settled its civil charges against BofA, which agreed to buy the New York investment bank last year, without the bank admitting or denying guilt in the case. BofA has said it didn't violate disclosure rules.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff held up his approval of the settlement, however, and ordered the SEC last month to explain why it didn't pursue charges against specific executives at Bank of America over the accusations.

Rakoff, in his ruling, found that the settlement "suggests a rather cynical relationship between the parties: the SEC gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger, the bank's management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators. And all this is done at the expense, not only of the shareholders, but also of the truth."

BEIJING (AP) — China tried today to allay fears of a trade war with Washington over tire tariffs, saying it will press a World Trade Organization case against new U.S. duties but wants to avoid harming relations."U.S. and Chinese trade and economic relations are the most important bilateral relations. We don't want to see anything bad happen to bilateral relations," said a Commerce Ministry spokesman, Yao Jian, at a news conference.Beijing filed a WTO complaint Monday challenging the higher tariffs on U.S. imports of Chinese-made tires as a violation of free-trade rules. President Barack Obama approved the duties Friday to slow the rapid growth of imports that a labor union blamed for the loss of thousands of U.S. jobs.The case adds to a string of trade disputes at a time when Beijing and Washington are cooperating on sensitive issues including the global economic crisis, climate change and efforts to end North Korea's nuclear program.