Russia Prepares to Leave the WTO
// Final negotiations underway in Washington
The current round of negotiations between Russia and the United States on Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization may the last. Although the signing of the final agreement between the countries had been planned for November 18 in Hanoi, when the Russian and American presidents will meet, Kommersant has learned that Russia's withdrawal from the negotiation process may be announced next week.
The last round of talk took place in Geneva in the middle of this month and no date was set for their continuation. Yesterday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov confirmed that negotiations were now going on in Washington with a team led by Maxim Medvedkov, head of the trade negotiations department of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. Negotiations at the expert level began on Monday with the United States represented by Dorothy Dwoskin, standing in for U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab.
At the last meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on October 21, the Russian president announced that, if no agreement was reached at the next meeting on the WTO, Russia may pull out of the negotiations with the U.S. altogether. Member of the Russian negotiating team Alexey Likhachev said that “no breakthroughs” have been achieved yet, but the final results of the negotiations would not be declared until the meeting between Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hanoi on November 18-19.
A Kommersant source in the Russian presidential administration says that Russia's withdrawal from negotiations may be announced in the first week of November, however, and that Putin told Rice of that at their last meeting. Russian authorities have become fond of making cautionary political statements recently. Gazprom, for example, announced that it would develop the Stockman natural gas deposit independently two weeks before it was to make its choice in the second round of the selection process for Western partners.
Zhukov acknowledged the possibility that the WTO negotiations may be completed successfully by the end of this month. A source in the U.S. administration close to the negotiations commented, however, that “I am getting the impression that Russia doesn't want to join the WTO. The Russian side is constantly refusing to meet obligations that it has already taken on.” Although the source did not specify the bases for his claim, he added that “the feeling arose from recent meetings between Russian and American officials.”
Heritage Foundation scholar Ariel Cohen does not believe that the decision to withdraw from negotiations is final. “In principle, Russia ants to accede to the WTO,” he told Kommersant. “But it wants to become a WTO member on its own terms.” Cohen sees at least two problems at work in the negotiations. The first is that “interested companies and industries simply buy the opinion of the officials who are developing Russia's position.” Second is the low level of the negotiators and the small size of the Russian delegation. “When China negotiated with the U.S. on accession to the WTO,” he noted, “3000 experts developed China's position. And they attained excellent results.”
Kommersant has learned that deliveries of U.S. meat products and intellectual property are the main topics of the current negotiations. Those same topics were discussed in Geneva.
Dmitry Butrin; Dmitry Sidorov, Washington
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 26, 2006
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