Seoul to exclude products from trade deal
Houston Chronicle
Seoul to Exclude Products From Trade Deal
27 April 2006
AP/SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea’s chief negotiator to free trade talks with the United States said Thursday that Seoul will try to exclude "super-sensitive products" from the deal, an apparent appeasement to farmers vehemently opposed to the pact.
"With agriculture, we will approach it with a view to minimize damages ... and prepare complimentary measures at the government level that go hand-in-hand with negotiations," Kim Jong-hoon told a seminar in comments confirmed by his ministry. "We will try to exclude super-sensitive products from being the subject of tariff reduction."
The two countries announced in February that they had formally launched talks that, if successful, would be the biggest for the United States since the North American free trade agreement in 1993.
The talks face strong resistance from South Korean farmers who have protested violently against any scaling back of protections for agriculture, especially rice, a move they fear will bankrupt them.
In negotiations with the U.S., expected to take at least a year, South Korea will try to open markets for some of its sensitive products gradually over more than 10 years while establishing safeguards like setting quotas for imports, Kim said.
"Based on our basic position that we should sufficiently consider the sensitivity of our agriculture, we will devise different negotiation strategies in consideration of the sensitivity of each product," Kim said. "For any damage that might incur as results of the negotiations, we will come up with government-level measures that reflect the opinions of the agricultural industry after an accurate analysis of the effects."
Seoul and Washington are to begin formal negotiations June 5 in Washington. Both sides are expected to focus on completing an agreement by June 2007, when the Bush Administration’s authority to negotiate an agreement and submit it to Congress for a vote minus amendments runs out.
South Korea is the United States’ seventh-largest trading partner, while the U.S. is the second-biggest destination for South Korean exports after China, according to U.S. and South Korean government figures.
