The South Korean government wants the country's parliament to approve a free trade pact with the U.S. by next month, despite the possibility of the U.S. Congress failing to approve it this summer, Seoul's senior trade official said Wednesday.

   The government and the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) have been seeking to pass the long-pending accord through the National Assembly during an extra session in August as the U.S. has been moving to get Congress to approve the pact by early next month.

   Congress is due to enter recess on Aug. 6, and the Obama administration, eager to expand exports and create jobs, has informally set the date as the deadline for passing long-overdue free trade bills, including a free trade pact with South Korea.

   But Obama has been preoccupied with drawn-out debt ceiling talks with congressional Republicans.

   "There are no changes in our stance that the free trade pact should be passed through the parliament," Lee Si-hyung, deputy trade minister, told reporters.

   Lee said Washington hasn't yet informed Seoul of any detailed things on the matter of the ratification of the pact.

   The Korea-U.S. FTA, known as KORUS FTA, was signed over four years ago in 2007, but the government's ratification bill has been blocked partly because of strong objections from the main opposition Democratic Party and the country's farming industry.

   The deal was supplemented late last year with minor modifications that mostly deal with the auto industry.

Source: Yonhap News (July 20, 2011)