U.S., Japan Call in Top Trade Negotiators : Commerce: Two sides seek to avert sanctions but caution that ‘vast differences’ remain to be overcome.

The United States and Japan are calling in their top trade negotiators to try to avert the imminent imposition of sanctions on $5.9 billion worth of Japanese cars, but both sides warned Saturday that the move does not mean a deal is assured.

U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor and Japanese Trade Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto are to meet here Monday evening, with just days remaining before the United States is scheduled to start levying 100% tariffs on 13 models of Japanese luxury cars. The deadline for a deal is Wednesday.

“It’s going to be a real uphill battle to achieve our objectives,” said U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Jeffrey Garten, who with senior negotiator Ira Shapiro has been leading the U.S. delegation here since Thursday.

“Over the last several days, we have managed to make crystal clear the differences in our position with the Japanese,” he said. “Now, the really challenging part is to narrow those differences. We haven’t made much progress on that score.”

Shapiro added that arrival of Kantor and Hashimoto “will make us work with additional urgency.”

The United States has been using the threat of sanctions in an attempt to make Japan substantially open its markets for foreign cars and auto parts.

U.S. officials cite statistics showing an overwhelming imbalance in auto trade between the two countries: Japan shipped 40 million cars to America over the last 25 years, for example, while America shipped only 400,000 cars to Japan.

Washington says the main reason for the imbalance is Japan’s “egregious” and unfair trade practices.

“Six, seven or eight years ago, it was different. There were problems of quality, of timing, of availability” with American cars, admitted Rep. Sander M. Levin, a Michigan Democrat who was here Saturday to monitor the discussions. “But that’s basically all in the past.”

Japan has countered that American cars aren’t bought in Japan because there are few U.S. models that are suitable for Japanese roads and consumer tastes. It has complained that Washington is trying to get “numerical targets” of Japanese market share--a charge the American side denies--and says that the unilateral tariffs to be imposed by the United States would violate international trading rules.

The Geneva talks so far have been characterized by marathon closed-door sessions lasting as late as 2:30 a.m., with weary-looking officials emerging to make brief and unsubstantive statements. There is much eagerness on both sides to find a solution--a failure would sour ties between the world’s two biggest economies and possibly affect the trading practices of other nations.

But no one is pretending there is any progress.

“There are still vast differences between Japan and the United States,” Japanese negotiator Yoshihiro Sakamoto said at the end of Saturday’s round of talks. “I don’t believe that the characterization of ‘fruitful’ would be warranted, but at the same time, the situation is not hopeless.”

Sakamoto indicated that Saturday afternoon’s session centered on Japan’s willingness to step up enforcement of its antitrust laws--which could make it easier for American auto makers to sell their cars through Japanese dealerships--and on how future foreign access to the Japanese car and car parts markets might be measured.

Differences in the way each side described the question of measurement shows how far apart the two countries still are.

A senior U.S. Administration official said Saturday that what Washington is asking for is some way of gauging whether Japan is really opening its markets as time passes, much as a parent hangs a chart on a wall to see how quickly a child is growing.

The parent isn’t trying to make the child grow to a certain height by keeping track of his development, the official said, and the United States isn’t trying to achieve specific market shares by setting up a monitoring system.

But the Japanese negotiators repeated their position that the U.S. demand boils down to a way of getting numerical targets.

“It’s managed trade,” said negotiator Osamu Watanabe. “We have strong objections to numerical targets.”