ASTANA, June 12 (RIA Novosti) - Kazakhstan has frozen WTO accession talks to pursue joint membership of the global trade body together with Russia and Belarus as part of their customs union, the Kazakh president said on Friday.
"We agreed that we would stop the negotiation process on accession to the WTO to orient ourselves to joint entry via the customs union," Nursultan Nazarbayev said.
Russia's WTO negotiator, Maxim Medvedkov, said on Thursday that the three countries would hold talks in Geneva next week to agree their approach to the entry of the Customs Union into the WTO.
The decision to seek joint membership of the WTO was taken on Tuesday at a meeting of the heads of government of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, the three countries forming the customs union.
Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said then that Russia would request the WTO stop Russia's national-level accession talks process.
The joint customs space is planned to come into effect on January 1, 2010, once the countries' tariffs have been unified.
Russia has been negotiating its entry into the World Trade Organization for 16 years, while Kazakhstan's membership discussions have taken 13 years.
Nazarbayev said the customs union would contain 180 million people and had a GDP of almost $2 billion in 2008, opening new opportunities for investment in Kazakhstan.
"I think it is quite good news for investors who, setting up in Kazakhstan, simultaneously get access to this huge market," the president said.
