U.S., S. Korea Settle Dispute Over Beef

The United States and South Korea have resolved a dispute over Korean restrictions on American beef imports, heading off threatened U.S. trade sanctions, the Bush Administration said Thursday.

The accord, worked out over months of negotiations, calls for South Korea to open its beef market fully over the next three years and to set up special procedures under which foreign producers, including Americans, can make contact with potential buyers.

In the interim, Seoul has agreed to increase current quotas gradually until they effectively are eliminated. The temporary quotas would allow 58,000 tons of imported beef in 1990, 62,000 in 1991 and 66,000 in 1992.

The issue had become a source of serious trade friction between the two countries. Last year, U.S. meat producers filed a formal unfair-trade-practices complaint that could have led to U.S. trade sanctions against South Korea if Seoul had not agreed to open its markets.

U.S. Trade Representative Carla A. Hills told reporters she thought that the Koreans had “responded as well as they could” to U.S. demands. Trade officials said Washington plans to close the case officially--and drop any threat of retaliation--by late April.