Russia, US smooth Moscow's bid to join WTO

The United States and Russia said on Friday they had resolved key issues blocking completion of Moscow's 17-year-old bid to join the World Trade Organisation.

Getting Russia into the WTO is a major goal of the "reset" in Russian-American ties that US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have pursued.

"I can say that the United States has removed all the questions regarding Russia joining the WTO," Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told a news briefing on the sidelines of a conference in the Ukrainian Black Sea resort of Yalta.

He said Russia's accession to the global trade rules body should be agreed within four months at most and that the actual accession procedure could take six to 12 months after that, indicating Russia would likely become a WTO member in 2011.

During their June 24 meeting in Washington, Obama and Medvedev set a Sept. 30, 2010, deadline for Russian and U.S. negotiators to resolve outstanding bilateral WTO issues. The two leaders discussed the issue in a phone call Friday.

The White House said in a statement that by passing major amendments to laws governing the effective protection of intellectual property rights, Russia had taken "significant steps" toward WTO membership.

US officials have long said Russia must improve efforts to stop piracy and counterfeiting of US music, movies and other goods if it wants to join the WTO.

The US Trade Representative's office has put Russia on its "priority watch list" for intellectual property theft for 13 straight years.

"President Obama pledged to support Russia's efforts to complete remaining steps in multi-lateral negotiations so that Russia could join the WTO as soon as possible," the White House statement said.

Medvedev has ordered an "invigoration" of the multi-lateral talks, the concluding stage of joining the WTO, RIA news agency quoted the Russian president's spokeswoman, Natalia Timakova, as saying.

US officials said last month that there was good momentum toward membership for Russia, the largest economy outside the 153-nation group. But Moscow has sent mixed signals to the WTO, clouding its bid with handouts and protectionist measures designed to revive Russian industry.