Russia's bilateral negotiations with the U.S. over its bid to join the world's largest trade body broke down in July over differences in agriculture, specifically meat. Moscow had wanted to sign a protocol with Washington during Russia's debut summit of the Group of Eight nations, but the deadline was moved back to the fall.
"A letter sent by [Minister] German Gref to the United States contains an unambiguous statement that Russia, while remaining committed to joining the WTO, intends to firmly defend its interests and in the event of unsuccessful October consultations will be forced to resume the position it maintained before agreements on the current terms of meat imports were reached pending Russia's accession to the WTO," the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade said in a news release.
Under the current agreements, the U.S. enjoys certain privileges.
The deal signed between the countries in 2005 that remains in force until 2009 raised quotas on U.S. supplies of poultry meat to 1.2 billion metric tons, of beef to 450,000 tons and of pork to 502,000 tons.
"The Russian side expects a solution to the remaining three or four differences to be found within two months," the ministry said.
The ministry also said the WTO was facing a deep systemic crisis after the Doha round of trade talks collapsed, which, according to the release, many WTO members linked to the uncompromising position assumed by the U.S. and its Trade Representative Susan Schwab, who also led negotiations with Gref.
The ministry added that under these conditions, the Russian government could not continue ignoring the demands of Russian farmers to revise meat quotas and abolish concessions offered to the U.S.
