Azerbaijan, Baku, July 31 / Trend I. Khalilova /
The Secretariat of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has set up a meeting between Azerbaijan and the working group of the organisation for the last quarter of 2012, deputy foreign minister and head of the negotiation group Mahmoud Mammadguliyev told Trend today.
Azerbaijan's negotiating group held bilateral talks with WTO member countries in Geneva a few days ago.
"Perhaps, the next meeting, the tenth round of negotiations on accession to the WTO will take place in the last quarter of this year as the last meeting was held in February 2012, " he added. "It would be impossible to give all necessary information for such a short period of time up till July, but it will be possible to hold multilateral negotiations with WTO member countries by late 2012."
However, it is necessary to submit all the required documents and first of all, to answer the questions.
"We will try to submit the documents in time to meet with the WTO working group in late 2012," Mammadguliyev said.
He added that it is planned to submit all the necessary documents in September for WTO member states to have the opportunity to become acquainted with them before the negotiations.
It is planned to hold bilateral meetings on goods and services with WTO member countries and multilateral negotiations on agricultural support within this meeting.
This will be the second meeting of Azerbaijan's negotiating group on WTO membership this year.
Azerbaijan held bilateral talks with the U.S., EU, Norway, Canada, Ecuador and Japan within the ninth round of multilateral talks on Azerbaijan's membership of the WTO in February 2012.
Azerbaijan has been represented at the World Trade Organisation as an observer since 1997 and began negotiating in 2004. Azerbaijan has held bilateral negotiations with the United States, Japan, Brazil, Ecuador, Sri Lanka, the European Union, Norway, India, South Korea, Taiwan Province of China, Canada and Switzerland for today.
Negotiations with Turkey, the Sultanate of Oman, United Arab Emirates, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan have been completed and protocols were signed. The country is in the process of signing the protocol with Moldova which is still considering the document.
Within the talks, Azerbaijan continues working on adjusting its national legislative base in accordance with the WTO requirements as well as on improving the current trade regime. About 40-50 legislative acts should meet the requirements of the organisations and 30 of them have already been unified and work in this direction will continue this year.
The working group on Azerbaijan to the WTO was established on July 16, 1997.
Azerbaijan has been represented at the World Trade Organisation as an observer since 1997.