Talks on Azerbaijan's WTO access suspended - official

The next round of negotiations on Azerbaijan's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) was postponed to the first quarter of 2014. Earlier, the meeting with the WTO's working group was scheduled for late October and early November 2013, the head of the negotiation group, Deputy Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Mahmud Mammadguliyev told on Friday.

According to him, the postponement of the negotiations is due to Organization's being busy with the countries that are in the very last stage of accession to the WTO.
"Everything was prepared by us. All documents that were necessary to submit are already in the WTO secretariat, " the Deputy Minister said.

The Azerbaijani side has sent the answers to all questions that were addressed to the country following the previous working meeting, as well as tables related to multilateral negotiations on agriculture.

The last talks were held in Geneva in early June, 2013.

To date, Azerbaijan is in the process of bilateral negotiations with the U.S., Japan, Brazil, Ecuador, Sri Lanka, European Union, Norway, India, South Korea, Taiwan Province of China, Canada, Switzerland and Honduras to join the WTO.

Azerbaijan started negotiations in 2004.

The negotiations have been completed and protocols were signed with Turkey, the Sultanate of Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. The country is at the stage of signing the protocol with Moldova, which still considers the document.

The working group on Azerbaijan at the WTO Secretariat was established on 16 July 1997.

Since 1997, Azerbaijan has been represented at the World Trade Organization as an observer.

Adapted from TODAY.AZ