BUSINESS

Plans for Joint WTO Bid Abandoned

Bloomberg

MOSCOW — The Economic Development Ministry said Friday that it agreed to shelve Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s plan to submit a joint membership bid to the World Trade Organization with Belarus and Kazakhstan after accepting the global trade arbiter’s accession rules.

The country will still seek to form a customs union with the countries, Maxim Medvedkov, the country’s chief negotiator on the WTO talks, said in a ministry statement Friday.

“The delegation of the customs union informed WTO members that de jure they will continue accession talks as sovereign states because any other approach would be linked with serious legal and procedural problems and could substantially delay concluding the talks,” Medvedkov said in the statement. “WTO rules do not preclude the creation of customs unions, but until now all customs unions were formed among WTO members.”

Putin had said in June that Moscow would try to join the WTO as a customs union with Minsk and Astana. He made joining the WTO a priority during his first presidential term, but Russia remains the largest economy outside the Geneva-based trade arbiter.

There is no precedent for negotiating a simultaneous WTO accession.

Putin last month called for trade concessions, including an “intensification” of WTO talks, following U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to abandon a missile shield in Eastern Europe.

President Dmitry Medvedev said in July that Russia might join the WTO separately.

??Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina told Interfax on Friday that there was “enormous potential” to increase trade with the U.S., according to a transcript on the ministry’s web site.

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