White House urges concessions from all in auto talks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Only concessions from all parties involved in talks to restructure the U.S. auto industry can help them emerge from their current crisis, a senior White House adviser said on Sunday.

"That's going to involve concessions on the part of everyone, not just the auto workers, but shareholders, creditors and, of course, the executives who run the company," President Barack Obama's senior adviser David Axelrod said on "Fox News Sunday."

Axelrod spoke after talks between the United Auto Workers and General Motors Corp broke down over retiree healthcare costs. Parallel talks between the union and Chrysler LLC have also failed to make progress.

GM and Chrysler LLC have until Tuesday to submit new restructuring plans to the U.S. government as a condition of the $17.4 billion in federal aid that has kept them both operating since the start of the year.

Axelrod repeated Obama's argument that the United States needs a thriving auto industry because millions of jobs depended on it. "So we have a vested interest in seeing the auto industry continue," he said.

"But as the president has said many times, that's going to involve significant restructuring of the industry so that they're looking forward and not back in producing the kind of cars that people are going to buy in the future."

Axelrod made it clear the White House would not intervene in the situation until after Tuesday.

"Obviously, this is a difficult situation and everyone's going to have to continue to work toward a solution. We're going to wait and see what the automakers have to say on Tuesday and we'll go from there," he said.

(Writing by Alan Elsner, editing by Patricia Zengerle)