Obama urges Bush not to submit Korea deal to Congress

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama, in a letter released on Friday, urged President George W. Bush not to submit a "badly flawed" free trade agreement with South Korea to Congress for a vote.

"Instead of provoking unnecessary and potentially corrosive confrontation over this agreement, your administration could make a significant contribution toward reestablishing trust with Congress and restoring bipartisan cooperation on trade by withholding the agreement," Obama said.

Obama's Senate office released the letter, dated on Thursday, shortly after a White House event where Bush pushed for approval of free trade pacts with Colombia, South Korea and Panama before the end of this year.

The Illinois senator has long been opposed to the South Korean agreement. But the Bush administration has hoped it could leverage broad support from the business community to persuade the Democratic-run Congress to vote on the deal.

Obama's letter was a further blow to those hopes. It followed a similar letter this week signed by New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, and nine other Democrats.

"Like many members of Congress, I oppose the U.S.-Korea FTA, which I believe is badly flawed. In particular, the terms of the agreement fall well short of assuring effective, enforceable market access for American exports of manufactured goods and many agricultural products," Obama said.

He singled out the automobile provisions as unfairly tilted in South Korea's favor.

"Approval of the agreement as negotiated would give Korean exports essentially unfettered access to the U.S. market and would eliminate our best opportunity for obtaining genuinely reciprocal market access in one of the world's largest economies," Obama said.

(Editing by Patricia Zengerle)