(Updates prices) LONDON, Aug 19 (Reuters) - German government bond yields dropped on Thursday, tracking U.S. Treasuries, after minutes from a U.S. Federal Reserve meeting showed that the conditions necessary to order a slowing of its asset purchases had yet to be met. But minutes from the Fed’s July meeting showed that policymakers in the United States felt the employment benchmark for decreasing support for the economy could be reached this year. The U.S. central bank is expected to begin tapering its asset purchases in the coming months, pushing the dollar to its highest level in months. Investors are trying to price in the exact timing and pace of the removal of monetary stimulus by the bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). “The FOMC minutes were a mixed bag, but apparently somewhat less hawkish than markets had feared,” analysts at RBC Capital Markets said in a note. While inflation in the United States is above target, the Fed’s stance that the maximum-employment goal had not yet been met suggested the timeframe for a tapering announcement was very unlikely to come at the September meeting, the analysts added. Investors are watching for any signs the Fed will start to taper bond purchases and end the extraordinary stimulus put in place to combat the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis. U.S. Treasury yields fell on Thursday, with the 10-year yield down 2.5 bps, as risk appetite shrank on concerns about the spread of coronavirus variants, and a day after the Federal Reserve said it expected to begin paring bond purchases this year. German 10-year bond yields, the benchmark for the eurozone, fell a basis point to -0.49%, within touching distance of a six-month low of -0.524% hit earlier this month. Longer-dated Bund yields dropped even more, with 30-year borrowing costs dipping 1.5 bps to a two-week low of -0.043%. Other high-grade debt, such as Dutch and Austrian government bonds, also saw yields dip towards recent lows., Also on Thursday, France sold 7 billion euros of short-dated conventional bonds and nearly 1 billion euros of inflation-linked bonds in a strongly oversubscribed auction process. Reporting by Abhinav Ramnarayan; Editing by Alex Richardson Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.