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Medvedev backs away from joint WTO bid
 
 
 
 
 
 
 AFP - Saturday, July 11
L'AQUILA, Italy (AFP) - - President Dmitry Medvedev indicated Friday that Russia is set to scrap a plan to join the World Trade Organisation as part of a three-nation bid, saying it would be simpler for Moscow to join on its own.
    
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin baffled the free-trade body last month by announcing that Russia would change tack on its accession and seek membership as a single customs bloc with Kazakhstan and Belarus.
But in a rare example of Medvedev being out of step with Putin, the Russian president told journalists after a G8 summit in Italy: "Joining separately seems to me simpler and more realistic."
Medvedev said Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan had agreed to set up a customs union if "by summer of this year" none had made it into the global free trade body. "The question is what happens now," he added.
Russia, the only major economic power still not belonging to the WTO, began negotiations to join in 1993, but talks have bogged down over disputes on a variety of issues and were set back by Russia's war with Georgia last year.
The delays have been marked by growing expressions of Russian frustration over the process.
Just before Putin's announcement, US Trade Representative Ron Kirk travelled to Russia for WTO talks with Russian officials who told him their country was keen to enter the global trade body by year's end.
By changing tack, Russia had appeared to have shot itself in the foot as many observers say Moscow would have to start the negotiating process from scratch despite its 16-year entry bid.
"We can enter the WTO -- and there should be no doubt that this aim remains -- in two different ways," Medvedev said.
"The first way -- entry as a customs union -- which our partners have characterized as being quite problematic. Or we can join in the other way -- by agreeing a common position between the three members of the customs union by joining separately.
"This seems to me simpler and more realistic although of course it would be part of a common position" with Belarus and Kazakhstan, he said.
US Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, visiting Moscow earlier this week, said the joint bid by Customs Union was "unworkable, unprecedented and would only delay matters".
Locke expressed surprise over Moscow's move, saying that prior to Putin's announcement Washington had been "on the cusp" of an agreement with Russia on its accession by the end of the year.
Medvedev's top economic advisor Arkady Dvorkovich raised the possibility on Thursday that Moscow might go it alone without Belarus and Kazakhstan, denying that the possible rethink on the membership bid was as a result of US pressure.
"We will only enter on conditions that suit us," he told reporters on the sidelines of the summit.
However the advisor said Moscow would insist that the former Soviet republics of Belarus and Kazakhstan join the WTO at the same time and on the same terms as Russia.
 
 
 
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Russian President Dmitri Medvedev discusses the concept of an international currency during the Group of Eight (G8) summit in L'Aquila, central Italy. Medvedev indicated Friday that Russia is set to scrap a plan to join the World Trade Organisation as part of a three-nation bid, saying it would be simpler for Moscow to join on its own.
 
 
 
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