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6th meeting of working group on Azerbaijanâ€™s admission to WTO held in Geneva

16 December 2008 11:29 (UTC +04:00)

Geneva â€“ APA. The 6th meeting of the working group on Azerbaijanâ€™s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) came to an end in Geneva. Foreign Ministryâ€™s press service told APA that the delegation led by Mahmud Mammadguliyev, deputy chairman of the commission on preparation for Azerbaijanâ€™s WTO admission, Deputy Foreign Minister had visited Geneva to attend the meeting of the working group.

Azerbaijanâ€™s permanent representative to UN office and other international organizations in Geneva, Ambassador Elchin Amirbayov, director of Economic Development Ministryâ€™s foreign trade policy and WTO department Adalat Muradov and officials of other government agencies attended the meeting of the working group.

The agenda of the meeting included the current state of bilateral negotiations on goods and services, answering questions on foreign trade regime, comments by WTO member states, implementation of legislation in the field of WTO in Azerbaijan.

Addressing the meeting Mahmud Mammadguliyev said Azerbaijani government had recently attached great importance to the development of non-oil sector, diversification of the countryâ€™s economy and gave information about the work done in that field.

He said improved proposals on the goods and services and other documents were prepared in a short time and submitted to the WTO secretariat and relevant countries and regular talks were held on the basis of these documents.

Representatives of a number of countries addressed the meeting and supported Azerbaijanâ€™s membership to WTO and positively appreciated the measures undertaken by our country toward this and their results as well. Brazil, India and Paraguay supported Azerbaijan as a developing country not having access to the open sea. Then Azerbaijani delegation answered the questions asked by the representatives of the United States, European Commission, Canada and other countries.

At the end, the member countries were requested to review issue of preparation of the draft report, to submit written opinions on the multilateral talks on agriculture according to the schedule submitted by Azerbaijani side and to submit the questions about Azerbaijanâ€™s foreign trade regime until January 23, 2009, as well as to review the possibility to hold the Working Groupâ€™s next meeting in the first half of 2009.

Within the framework of the Working Groupâ€™s meeting, bilateral talks on the goods and services were held with the United States, European Commission, Brazil, Japan, Sri Lanka, Chinaâ€™s Taiwan Province, Canada, South Korea, Norway, India and Ecuador, who are interested in Azerbaijani market and submitted appropriate request on the goods and services.

Members of the negotiating groups on Belarusian and Iraqi membership to WTO also held meetings and consultations were held with the Ukrainian and Chinese representatives on their membership as well.