Azerbaijan, Baku / Trend corr. U.Ismaylova / Mahmud Mammadguliyev, the Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister and also head of the negotiation group to join Azerbaijan to the World Trade Organization (WTO) stated on 10 July during the German-Azerbaijani energy forum that Azerbaijan may join the WTO in 2008-2009.
According to Mammadguliyev, the negotiation group currently discusses meetings and is about to hold bilateral negotiation. "After the last meeting in Geneva on 22 June which involved questions and answers, we believed that this would improve the Azerbaijani legislation," Mammadguliyev added.
By the end of July the negotiation group will develop proposals and submit them to the WTO's secretariat for consideration during the next meeting planned for September and October.
Azerbaijan held four meetings with WTO so far. During the two meetings the main issue for discussion was the foreign trade regime, and beginning from 2005 the country began discussions of full scale issues.
Bilateral negotiations are held on the importing of foreign commodities and services in the Azerbaijani market, multilateral internal support of agriculture and export subsidiaries in this field.
Since 1997 Azerbaijan is represented in WTO in the status as an observer.