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Russia Won’t Join WTO This Year, Gref Said
Although Russia and its trading partners are willing to complete all negotiations on the WTO this year, Russia will have no time to join this organization in 2007, as has been planned previously, Economic Development Minister German Gref told RIA Novosti Thursday.
”We won’t manage to join the WTO before this year-end,” Gref said, pointing out that the target is to complete all negotiations in 2007. “We are yet in line with the schedule of completing negotiations before the year-end,” the minister specified after talking with counterparts of the United States, EU, Canada, Australia and South Korea during the APEC-2007 summit in Sydney.
On Thursday, German Gref met with EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy and the U.S. trade envoy Susan Schwab. According to Gref, the general mood of negotiators is that completing the talks by the year-end will be hard but it is possible.
During the round of multilateral talks that Geneva will host in the fall, Russia has a chance to agree on 12 remaining sections of the report of the work group related to the system issues of its admission to the WTO. This report is the final document that Moscow needs to enter this organization.
www.kommersant.com
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