Russia will soon send revised terms for its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to interested WTO member states reflecting its plans to join as part of a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, Moscow's chief WTO negotiator Maxim Medvedkov said on Tuesday.
"We will send five sections, revised due to our participation in the Customs Union, to WTO members within the next few days. The sections are intended to be discussed at the working group's informal consultations in the second half of September," Medvedkov said.
"Then we will receive the first comments from WTO partners on how successful we have been in solving the task. Overall, we are to revise about 25-30 sections," he said.
Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus notified the WTO in June 2009 of their intention to join the world trade club as a customs union. Four months later, the three former Soviet republics announced they would resume talks on WTO accession separately, but from synchronized positions.
Disagreements in Russia's WTO negotiations largely involved its import meat quotas and state support for domestic agricultural producers, Medvedkov said.
Russia has been in negotiations for WTO membership for 17 years compared with the average accession period of five to seven years and is the only major economy outside of the global trade body.
MOSCOW, August 4 (RIA Novosti)
