* US-Korea Business Council "would expect" deal this year
* Congressional critics meeting President Obama
* South Korea says "very limited" changes needed
By Doug Palmer
WASHINGTON, Nov 18 (Reuters) - The outlook is good for concluding trade talks between the United States and South Korea by the end of the year, despite a major setback this month, a U.S. business official said on Thursday.
Tami Overby, president of the U.S.-Korea Business Council, said her group met Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis on Wednesday "and he continues to say a matter of days and weeks" before the deal is sealed.
The two countries plan to resume talks on the trade deal in Washington, after they failed to resolve remaining beef and auto trade issues during President Barack Obama's recent trip to Seoul for the Group of 20 summit.
Overby said she was waiting to hear the date of the talks but thought a deal could be reached by the end of this year.
"I would expect that," she said.
Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak set the G20 deadline for resolving differences about the pact, which was signed by the countries in June 2007 but never ratified.
The sticking points mainly involve U.S. auto industry concerns that the pact does not do enough to tear down South Korean regulatory barriers blamed for low U.S. car sales while phasing out remaining U.S. tariffs on South Korean vehicles.
The United States also is looking for assurances outside the pact that South Korea's market will remain open to U.S. beef and continue to grow, after a number of trade disruptions in the past decade.
About a dozen Democratic lawmakers who have raised concerns and are pressing for other changes were due to discuss the pact with Obama later on Thursday.
South Korea conceded on Thursday that some changes may be needed but said the scope of any revisions would be limited.
Previously, Seoul resisted reopening the text of the pact, which it said could cause it to unravel by upsetting the delicate balance of concessions on both sides.
"It is not full-fledged negotiations. What is inevitable is we need negotiations on a very limited scale to give and take what each side needs," South Korea's deputy minister for trade in charge of talks on the pact, Choi Seok-young, said in Seoul.
The United States wants a slower phase-out of tariffs on South Korean cars and U.S. industry fuel economy and emissions standards to be automatically recognized in South Korea.
Choi said any change to the tariff phase-out schedule will have to involve changes to the text itself and is therefore unacceptable as a matter of principle. But he left open the possibility for discussions.
The deal, if ratified by the two countries' assemblies, would be one of the largest free trade pacts ever and the largest signed by the United States since the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico that went into effect in 1994. (Additional reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul; Editing by John O'Callaghan)