The outcasts

Kobyakov complained that the EU and the USA were refusing to negotiate the accession of Belarus to the WTO.

Andrew Kobyakov, the Belarus ambassador in Russia, declared that the refusal of the countries of the European Union and the USA of all contacts with Belarus was slowing down the negotiations about republic’s accession to the WTO.

“There is a problem with a group of countries that does not conduct bilateral negotiations with us and principally refuses to do this. These are the countries of the European Union and the USA”, - told Kobyakov the agency “Interfax-West” on Tuesday in Minsk.

He noted that Belarus had been negotiating about accession to the WTO for a long time, and agreements with 10 countries had already been reached.

“Nothing special, we didn’t and we won’t give up any of our positions. That is why our negotiations are going not fast enough”, - noted A.Kobyakov.

“WTO accession at any cost is our motto”, - underlined the diplomat.

A.Kobyakov also noted that Russian constitutional court had recognized Russian accession to the WTO as legitimate last Monday. In this regard he said that this decision of the constitutional court did not create problems for Belarus which had counted on active support of Russia as a member of WTO in its own negotiations.