Russia To Export Beef And Pork
Ankit Gupta - All Headline News Staff Writer St. Petersburg, Russia (AHN) - Negotiations on Russia's admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) broke off with no agreement. Trade officials blamed the failure on an impasse over Russian barriers to US beef and pork exports, reported the Times News Network. President Bush said the deal could not be reached because the administration believed Russia needed to offer more in trade concessions to satisfy US lawmakers. "We're tough negotiators and the reason why is because we want the agreement that we reach to be accepted by our Congress," Bush said. Top trade negotiators for the two countries predicted a deal could be reached within two to three months. The US is the only country that has yet to sign off on Russia's membership in the WTO. Failure of the negotiations denied Russian President Vladimir Putin one of the economic prizes he had hoped to obtain as part of this year's Group of Eight summit of major industrial countries, which was being held on Russian soil for the first time. Russia, the largest economy outside the WTO, sees membership as a way to demonstrate how far it has come since its economic collapse in 1998. US trade representative Susan Schwab said that significant progress had been made in narrowing differences in such areas as reducing the theft of American copyrighted material and in boosting sales of manufactured products. But she said |
