Mahmud Mammadguliyev, the Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister, stated to a meeting dedicated to Azerbaijans entrance to the World Trade Organization (WTO) that the State Commission on Azerbaijans entrance to the WTO is to submit answers to questions put by the WTO member-states to the secretariat of this organization, Trend reports.
The answers from the relevant state bodies are coming so slowly, whereas it is very important for Azerbaijan in the resolution of two issues: the first is the conduct of the 5th round of talk with the WTO till the end of 2006 and development of a summary report on Azerbaijans activities in this period (since 1997 Azerbaijan hold a status of observer at the WTO).
Today Azerbaijan is committed to implement work in 8 directions, firstly to design answers to questions which were put by the United States, the European Union, Japan, Canada, and Chinese Republic of Taiwan. The talks on goods and services are being conducted with them.
The second direction of the activities is the improvement of the legislation in line with the level that the WTO member-countries insist.
Some proposals have been designed to increase the status of the state commission on the entrance to the World Trade Organization and to establish a Council at the Azerbaijani Present on its basis, Heydar Babayev, the Azerbaijani Minister for Economic Development, told the meeting, also the head of the State Commission. The charter of the Organization Council has been developed and submitted to the relevant bodies for coordination.
The Minister said that the increase of the status of the state commission is very important for a responsible body, which will act as a side in the talks on entrance to the WTO. The he hailed the cut in the number of question submitted to Azerbaijan. After the last meeting in March, 4h in its turn, some issues on privatization, regulation of export-import operations, licensing, reservation of copyrights have been submitted to Azerbaijan.
It is notable that the bilateral talks are complete with three countries Georgia Moldova and Oman and relevant protocols have been accorded. They are scheduled for signing by the end of the year.
