South Korea Prime Minister sees US trade deal, questions remain

South Korea will sign a free trade pact with the United States at the end of June but may have to re-negotiate parts of the agreement later, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said on Monday.
Han, in Paris to promote South Korea's bid to host the Expo 2012, said the government had received US requests for further negotiations on seven areas shortly before his departure for Europe on Saturday.
The agreement is due to be signed on June 30 and Han said most of the issues could be resolved easily although there were more serious problems over labour and environment conditions. "One thing is clear. We will sign by the end of June," he told reporters. Whether those contents will be included is not clear yet," he said.
"We agreed to continue our additional negotiations for those seven points proposed by the United States. We are trying not to delay our signing of the agreement."
"If we are not fully agreed on those seven issues, we will sign them and maybe we will revise them afterwards," he said. The United States and South Korea agreed a free trade pact in April after protracted and difficult negotiations but the deal still needs to be signed and requires final ratification by the US Congress and the South Korean parliament.
Following a deal between the White House and Congress in May, extra provisions on labour rights and environmental standards must be attached to free trade deals. Han said Korea had no problem with the environmental and labour standards issues as such but he said including such matters in a trade pact could cause problems for many less developed countries.
"Never in history have both environment and labour been at the same level as trade policy," he said. "If we include it in the free trade agreement, countries which violate labour and environment standards will be subject to trade retaliation, which is very powerful."
The deal has faced high profile opposition in the United States from critics including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, particularly over the car industry, where US manufacturers have complained over their access to Korean markets. Han said negotiations with the European Union over a free trade agreement were going well and he expected talks to be completed by the end of the year.