The United States said Friday it has suspended new US adoptions of Nepalese children, citing flaws in the system used to determine that the children had been abandoned.

The State Department and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a joint statement they have "decided to suspend adjudication of new adoption petitions and related visa issuance for children" listed as abandoned.

Rosemary Macray, a State Department spokeswoman, told AFP all cases are effectively frozen as "all of the Nepali children that we have seen being matched with US families by the government of Nepal have been reported to be abandoned."

The joint statement said US officials checking abandonment cases often found documents to be "unreliable," citing examples where data on children's birth certificates "has been changed or fabricated."