The South Korean government warned Friday that it will not sit idle over the recent leak of a confidential government report on the free trade talks with the United States, hinting that the government will review legal issues surrounding the incident.

"Leaking such a confidential document when the government is in talks over a deal where Korea's big interests are at stake is tantamount to disarming the government, and is a very crude and low tactic," the committee on South Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (FTA) said in a statement.

The committee, led by former Finance Minister Han Duck-soo, said the government will hold the person in charge responsible.

"The government will find out the person who leaked the document and hold the person responsible for the act... That includes holding the person accountable for his lack of social and moral responsibility, as well as reviewing whether the person breached the law by leaking the document," the committee said.

Seoul and Washington ended their sixth round of free trade talks here Friday, with the U.S. negotiator Wendy Cutler expressing optimism over the prospects for FTA and saying "important" progress has been made this week.

During the intense five-day negotiations, an unexpected breakthrough came when a leaked South Korean government report on Thursday suggested the country has virtually retracted its demand for the U.S. to revise its anti-dumping laws for Korean goods, one of the single most important demands by the Seoul negotiators.

The document had been kept confidential since the Foreign Ministry reported it to an FTA committee in the parliament on Jan. 13. South Korean officials have long complained that the U.S. has often unfairly used its anti-dumping tariffs to curb semiconductors and other high-tech South Korean shipments.

The two sides are pushing to wrap up negotiations before U.S. President George W. Bush's "fast-track" trade promotion authority expires on July 1. South Korea and the U.S. plan to meet again in February for the seventh round of FTA talks, negotiators said.