US 'strongly' backs Russia entry into WTO: official
Agence France-Presse
Washington "strongly supports" Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization, a top US official said Wednesday, amid renewed calls by Russia for quick admission to the global trade body.
"The United States strongly supports Russia's accession to the WTO," said William Burns, US undersecretary of state for political affairs.
Burns noted in remarks made at the Center for American Progress, a Washington thinktank, that Russia is "the largest economy in the world outside the WTO -- the only G20 member outside" the influential trade bloc.
A former US ambassador to Moscow, he said that "it is truly is not in Russia's interest, or our interest" that Russia remain outside the WTO.
The US diplomat's remarks came one day after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for Moscow's swift entry into the WTO "without humiliation or new demands."
"We should have been in the WTO a long time ago," Medvedev said Tuesday, in Washington, where he attended this week's international nuclear weapons summit.
Russia repeatedly has accused Washington of hindering its efforts to join the Geneva-based WTO, which was set up in 1955 to help liberalize the flow of global commerce.
Medvedev said in remarks made at a US thinktank Tuesday that his country wanted to be part of the 153-member body, but its accession "should be done quickly, without humiliation or new demands."
Russia over the years also has expressed skepticism that the United States would lift the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a law imposing trade restrictions on Russia that dates back to the Cold War and which remains a sticking point in US-Russian relations.
Burns vowed Wednesday however that the United States would "provide strong support at every step of the way, both technical and political" to help Russia's entry into the WTO.
The last country to be admitted was the northern African island nation of Cape Verde, which joined the body in 2008.
Source: AFP
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