Russia's WTO bid stuck on Georgian obstacle
As a member of the WTO, Georgia holds an effective veto over Russia's accession, since candidates for membership must agree terms with all existing members before they can join.
Georgia's representative told the WTO meeting it had held intensive talks with Russia in the last few months but there was no major breakthrough, said the trade official, who asked for anonymity because the closed-door meeting was confidential.
Georgia wants Russia to accept customs controls on their internationally recognised border, including the border with two regions inside Georgia that have rebelled against rule from Tbilisi and are loyal to Moscow.
Russian support for the regions is so strong that when Georgia tried to recapture one of them, South Ossetia, in 2008, Russian troops repelled Georgian forces in a brief war.
Although it lost the war, Georgia is still able to use WTO accession as leverage against its giant northern neighbour, which has been pursuing WTO membership for 18 years and is easily the biggest economy still outside the 153-member body.
Last month Russian Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina said accession could be delayed by several more years if there was no agreement on key issues by the end of July, and the effort to clinch a deal this year won support from the G20 and G8 groups of nations.
The chairman of the working party on Russia's accession, Icelandic Ambassador Stefan Johannesson, told the meeting on Wednesday that the work on the accession had intensified and it was technically feasible that the negotiations could be concluded this year.
But besides Georgia's consent, the WTO talks still need to cover two important areas of trade policy, either of which could cause more delays to Russia's entry: sanitary and phyto-sanitary issues and trade-related investment measures.
Even if those areas are agreed, Russia's entire package of proposed trade reforms, a work in progress which is likely to run to 600 pages, still needs to be accepted.
Copyright Reuters, 2011