TRADE : U.S. Steps Up Pressure on Japan to Open Its Car Market : Talks: White House holds back on specific threats or sanctions. Congress presses Clinton to take action.

The White House has quietly begun to step up pressure on Japan to reach an agreement opening its automobile market to U.S. companies and summoned the Japanese ambassador Thursday to emphasize the importance of the issue.

Negotiators have made “zero progress” in their attempt to break down Japanese barriers to imports of U.S. autos and auto parts, a senior Clinton Administration official said.

While the Administration is holding back from specific threats of trade sanctions or from setting specific new deadlines, it might try to move up to next month a September deadline set for reaching an agreement.

“We will not wait forever,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The time for serious negotiations and resolution of this issue is now.”

The renewed but behind-the-scenes effort comes shortly after the Administration turned a corner in another troublesome trade relationship--reaching a copyright piracy agreement with China--and at a time when negotiations with European nations have been put on hold as a result of the unresolved dispute over naming the first chief of the new World Trade Organization.

With the decks cleared to turn once again to one of the most troublesome trade issues that the United States faces with Japan, U.S. officials expressed concern that Tokyo may have misunderstood Washington’s low-key approach as a lack of interest.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor is said to have warned Ambassador Takakazu Kuriyama.

The new push also comes as pressures are building on President Clinton to take action.

House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) is talking about seeking legislation renewing the United States’ authority to retaliate against unfair Japanese trade practices and nearly 100 members of Congress have signed a letter to Clinton warning him that talks with Japan must show some sign of progress by the end of the month to avoid deterioration of U.S.-Japanese ties.

The only operative agreement between the two countries regarding autos was reached in 1992, when Japan voluntarily pledged to purchase $19 million worth of U.S. auto parts over a period that ends March 31.

In 1994, Japan ran up a $65.7-billion trade surplus with the United States, nearly two-thirds of which was attributed to the nearly one-way auto trade. While U.S. auto sales are slowly increasing in Japan, the market is still considered nearly closed, with U.S. companies holding no more than a 1.5% share. The sale of U.S. auto parts in Japan amounts to 2.4% of the market.

An official of the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry, making it clear that Japan would not be rushed back into negotiations, told Reuter news agency that no talks would be scheduled this month.

Kantor was said to have told Kuriyama that the United States would be ready to resume negotiations next week.

The auto talks are a critical element in the framework established for U.S.-Japanese trade negotiations in July, 1993, when Clinton visited Tokyo.

With progress made in such business sectors as glass sales, medical equipment and telecommunications, negotiators last year quietly turned their focus toward automotive issues, the most intransigent and potentially lucrative element of the trade agenda.

The senior Administration official said that Kantor had expressed to Kuriyama the Administration’s “strong concern” about lack of progress in an area in which the United States is “wide open” to foreign products, with Japanese automobiles accounting for 24% of the U.S. market.