South Korean lawmakers accused a panel of top and former defense officials Monday of pushing an environmental deal with the United States unilaterally and pandering to its demands despite the astronomical cost involved in detoxifying the land at former American bases.

The three-hour parliamentary hearing came one day after a local professor claimed in a report to the National Assembly that it would require more than 600 billion won (US$647 million) to entirely clean up the land at 23 former U.S. military bases.

The Defense Ministry has denied the estimate, issuing a separate report putting the expenses at 27 billion won to 119 billion won.

About 30,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against North Korean aggression -- a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War -- and the U.S. plans to return the land of 66 American bases by 2011 as part of a U.S. global realignment plan.

Handing out bottles of putrid oil and earth collected from a former U.S. base, Rep. Je Jong-geel of the liberal Uri Party said South Korean defense officials colluded in U.S. negligence in cleaning up the land used by American troops.

"The contamination is both serious and critical," said Je, a member of the Environment and Labor Committee. "You have not made much of an effort to push the U.S. to take charge of the cleanup."

The committee, which organized the hearing, made a field trip to three U.S. bases north of Seoul earlier this month and found large amounts of underground oil and heavy metals that are believed to have been dumped by U.S. troops. One legislator sarcastically said that his country has turned into an "oil-producing nation."

"We do understand it's serious and critical, and we did our best, but the U.S. position was so strong," defense negotiator Kim Byung-gi said without elaborating.

Defense Minister Kim Jang-soo said South Korean negotiators faced difficulty in agreeing on the extent of cleanup with the U.S. because of a difference in the way the two sides defined "known, imminent, and substantial endangerment to human health (KISE)."

U.S. authorities have said they would not accept financial responsibility for contamination that goes beyond KISE, complaining Seoul has set too high a standard.

Despite the differences, the talks were conducted "equally, state to state" without any external pressure, Kim said.

But Rep. Woo Won-shik, an independent lawmaker, said the talks were held behind closed doors and failed to abide by a decades-old military agreement between Seoul and Washington that required monitoring by the Environment Ministry.

"This deal should be nullified immediately," he said.

Minister Kim rebutted the argument, saying his ministry consulted sufficiently with the Environment Ministry because its report was used during the talks with the U.S.

Most of the American bases have been here for over half a century, since the Korean War. The contamination is believed to have resulted from the storage, distribution and consumption of fuel and possibly ammunition and chemical materials, not from any commercial activities.

"We simply received these pieces of land without any sincere efforts on the American side," said Rep. Dan Byung-ho, a member of the minor Liberal Democratic Labor Party. "The Defense Ministry has sacrificed our environment and health for the sake of defense and the alliance with the U.S."

Kim said his ministry has widely considered environmental concerns, but still argued, as chief of defense, that he would choose security benefits over any other priorities.

"A tactical gain does not assure a total victory," said Kim, citing military terminology and suggesting environmental setbacks were inevitable in the face of a decades-old military alliance between Seoul and Washington. The Defense Ministry said last week it plans to dedicate eight units, consisting of about 260 soldiers, to cleaning up the land used at U.S. bases, a measure snubbed as inadequate by activists and some lawmakers.

SEOUL, June 25 (Yonhap News)