US trade talks with S Korea 'hard slogging'-Schwab

WASHINGTON, Feb 15 (Reuters) South Korea continues to resist US demands to open its market to more US cars in talks on a bilateral free trade pact, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said.

''It's hard slogging, but we haven't given up yet,'' Schwab yesterday said during a hearing in the US House of Representatives on the Bush administration's trade agenda.

The United States and South Korea are expected to wrap up their seventh round of talks on a proposed free trade agreement later yesterday. At start of negotiations on Sunday, chief US negotiator Wendy Cutler said it was vital that substantial progress be made this week for a deal to be struck by a US legal deadline at the end of March.

The United States is pressing South Korea to eliminate an 8 percent tariff on automobile imports and other ''nontariff barriers'' that keep out American cars, Schwab said.

Rep. Sander Levin, a Michigan Democrat, told Schwab that Congress would only support an agreement that knocks down South Korea's ''economic iron curtain to our industrial goods, including automotive, in a measurable way.'' Other lawmakers expressed concern that Seoul was refusing to eliminate tariffs on some farm products it does not even grow and balking at US demands for a mechanism to resolve investment disputes.

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