SEOUL: The US administration is committed to ratifying a sweeping free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea this year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday. “I have come here to express our strong commitment to ratifying the KORUS (Korea-US) FTA by the end of this year,” she told the US Chamber of Commerce during a visit to Seoul. The pact will be “one of my top priorities for the coming months”, Clinton said. The US agreement was signed in 2007 but has yet to be ratified by the two countries' legislatures. The deal is in the “home stretch”, Clinton said Saturday. Her timetable is less ambitious than that of US Trade Representative Ron Kirk. In January he voiced hope the deal would win approval from Congress by July 1, when a trade pact between the European Union and South Korea takes effect. The US-South Korea agreement, which will remove 95 percent of tariffs between the two economies, has been controversial in both countries, with the main US union confederation saying that big businesses would be the main beneficiary. But President Barack Obama's administration last year won over many holdouts within his camp when South Korea agreed to revisions, including slowing down the elimination of US tariffs on car imports. – Agence France
