By Michael Ha
Staff Reporter

South Korean negotiators have won a new concession from U.S. officials regarding the American beef import agreement, with the new clause giving Seoul ``quarantine and inspection sovereignty,'' government sources said Monday.

The new clause, which will allow the administration to halt all imports if new cases of mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) are reported, will be written as a specific provision of the bilateral agreement, they said.

Until now, the government would have been able to only ban imports linked to specific slaughtering and processing facilities where new cases were found.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is scheduled to hold a press briefing today to offer details of the amendment.
The ministry had originally planned to hold the briefing yesterday but said it would postpone the announcement by one day because talks with U.S. negotiators were not quite completed yet and they were still working on some details.

One area that has not yet been mentioned in this additional negotiation is the importing of American beef from cattle older than 30 months, which observers say poses the greatest potential danger.

In a separate development, Minister of Knowledge Economy Lee Yun-ho issued a warning that if the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement is not ratified in the current 17th-term National Assembly, it could lead to a prolonged delay. ``If this goes to the 18th National Assembly, all the procedures will have to start again from the beginning. And we would need to convince new lawmakers all over again to vote for the ratification,'' Lee said in a radio interview Monday.

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