Russia plans to give the World Trade Organization a document in the next few weeks aimed at clearing up confusion over its plans for joining the world trade body, a Russian official said Thursday.
"To my knowledge, by the end of the year," Aleksey Shishayev, head of the economic office at the Russian Embassy in Washington, told reporters when asked when Moscow would deliver the information requested by the WTO's 153 members.
That would hopefully clear the way for the WTO membership to decide how to proceed, he said during a panel discussion on the issue at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
There has been confusion over Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus' bid to join the WTO since June, when the three surprised the world by announcing they planned to join together as a customs union with a common external tariff.
Russia is the largest economy still outside the WT0. Just days before the June announcement, Moscow appeared to be headed toward finishing its accession process by the end of this year after falling badly off track in 2008 because of its brief war with WTO member Georgia.
The three ex-Soviet republics abandoned their joint accession plan at a WTO meeting in Geneva in October, telling members they would pursue their candidacies as separate states while coordinating closely on the talks.
But work on the countries' accession bids remains suspended until WTO members receive a written explanation of exactly how the three countries intend to proceed, Chiedu Osake, director of accessions at the WTO, said during the panel discussion.
"The membership is waiting for that note promised by the three delegations" before making a formal decision on whether to relaunch accession talks, Osake said.
There remains uncertainty over what the customs union, which takes effect Jan 1, will mean for bilateral accession agreements the three countries have already negotiated with other WTO members, he said.
For example, Kazakhstan would have to raise tariffs on some 3,000 product lines to bring them in line with Russian tariffs in the new customs union, while Belarus would have to adjust 22, Osake said.
WTO Director General Pascal Lamy has urged Russia not just to clarify the implications of the new customs union on its WTO accession process, but to figure out how to resolve the few remaining commercial issues that stand in its way of joining the world trade body.
Most importantly, Lamy has told Russian negotiators to "structure a calendar-driven end game. You have to bite the bullet. ... Eventually it has to be done," Osake said.
Shishayev said Russia remained committed to the goal of becoming a WTO member after 16 years of negotiation.
