/asia
SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- Hours before a U.S.-South Korean summit, the two nations have reached an agreement that could clear the way for South Korea to resume imports of U.S. beef, a South Korean news agency reported Friday.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is scheduled to visit. President Bush in Washington.
Negotiators on both sides have "agreed to rewrite import sanitation rules for U.S. beef," according to the Yonhap news agency. The parties were fine-tuning details and plan to make a formal statement about 6 p.m. local time (5 a.m. ET), a government spokesman told CNN.
Officials were "extremely hopeful" that negotiations would yield an agreement, senior White House aide, Dennis Wilder said on Thursday.
South Korea banned U.S. beef imports in 2003 amid concerns over a case of mad cow disease in the United States, closing what was then the third-largest market for U.S. beef exporters.
South Korea resumed imports on a limited scale in April 2007 -- allowing the United States to ship boneless beef from young animals -- but it halted them again in October 2007.
The closure of the South Korean market has cost the beef exporters in the United States $3.5 billion to $4 billion, said Jim Herlihy, vice president for information services at the U.S. Meat Export Federation. E-mail to a friend 
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