WASHINGTON, USA - President-elect Barack Obama's chief of staff Sunday urged swift action to rescue the US auto industry, which is in peril due to flagging sales, job cuts and the credit crunch.

"Washington needs to look at fast-forwarding the 25 billion dollars(S$37.4 billion) that has been provided for retooling the factories for basically a more fuel-efficient auto fleet," Congressman Rahm Emanuel told CBS.

Emanuel, in his first televised interviews since being named Obama's chief of staff, said the president-elect has asked his economic team study a variety of options aimed at boosting the auto industry.

But he also urged the existing administration and Congress to move quickly to save struggling carmakers, who have asked lawmakers for an extra 25 billion dollars in government-backed loan guarantees to help save them from imminent collapse.

That cash influx would be on top of 25 billion dollars in loan guarantees, recently authorized by Congress as part of a massive economic bailout package, to help US automakers develop more fuel-efficient vehicles.

"As president-elect Obama has said throughout the campaign and as I think as recently as Friday ... the auto industry is an essential part of our economy and an essential part of our industrial base," Emanuel told ABC.

Emanuel declined to say whether Obama supported an appeal by Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid to move an even bigger chunk of cash from the 700 billion dollar bailout package to the auto sector.

"President-elect Obama has repeated that there's one president, one administration at a time and so you don't want to get in front of that," he said, as Obama's transition team prepared to take over from President George W. Bush on January 20.

However, he said "there are existing authorities within the government today that the administration should tap to help the auto industry."

The biggest US-automaker General Motors warned on Friday that it would run out of cash in the first half of next year without a massive cash injection, and said it had suspended takeover talks with another struggling car maker, Chrysler.

Ford Motor Co. also reported heavy financial losses and plans to slash an additional 10 percent from its salaried North American worker costs, citing the impact of a global slowdown that has already gravely weakened the US auto industry.

Ford, the number-two US automaker, said it had lost 129 million dollars in the third quarter and had consumed 7.7 billion dollars of cash.

ksh/mac