Minsk hopes dialog on its joining WTO with EU, US to become more active
MINSK. June 3 (Interfax) - The Belarusian Foreign Ministry expects the talks with the European Commission and the United States regarding its joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) to become more active, Belarusian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Guryanov told Interfax.
"We will organize the dialog with the European Commission and the U.S. in such a way that it does not drag. We need to form a step-by-step plan of actions, within which profile experts will be able to work closely. We suppose that our colleagues from the EU and U.S. are ready for this," Guryanov said.
Guryanov said that the talks with the European Commission at a directorate level were to be held in Brussels on June 17, on the results of which the plan of bilateral negotiations was to be developed. "We hope that this meeting will allow us hearing out the scope of the European Commission's fundamental approaches to the trajectory of further process of our joining the WTO," the official said.
These talks will follow the consultations, which began ahead of the multilateral working group meeting on Belarus joining the WTO in mid May in Geneva. "We have received a comprehensive questionnaire on consolidated report containing 80 questions from the European Commission ahead of the multilateral group meeting. We have worked out these questions as quickly as possible and got a positive quality and speed evaluation from them," Guryanov said.
The official said that the Belarusian Foreign Ministry was also preparing a meeting with U.S. representatives to determine a more exact plan of bilateral talks. "We negotiated with a U.S. representative in the WTO in May in Geneva, from whom we got a list of questions the U.S. side was interested in. These questions will be the agenda of our next meeting, the date for which will be scheduled after we answer all of them," Guryanov said.
Guryanov said that Belarus began the bilateral consultations with the U.S. in April. "We have a constructive approach from the U.S. delegation," the official said.
When speaking about the general stance of Belarus on the talks to join the WTO, the deputy foreign minister said that Minsk would be guided by the level of the customs tariff adjustment Russia accorded when it joined the WTO. "We insist that our obligations for goods to access the market were as similar to the Russian obligations as possible. As of now, taking into account Russia's joining the WTO, everyone has the available information on the dynamic of customs tariff change in the Customs Union. We are to be guided by this very adjustment level as well. Belarus does not consider the possibility of a deeper customs tariff liberalization in comparison with the one existing in the Customs Union taking into account our obligations within the three [the Customs Union includes Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan]," Guryanov said.
It has been reported that Belarus resumed multilateral talks to join the WTO in the framework of a working group on joining, which comprises 41 countries, in mid May after a four-year pause.
