A bilateral agreement on facilitating markets in the sectors of goods trade and services as regards the accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) was signed on Friday in Washington between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States of America. This was announced by Minister of Commerce and Industry Dr. Hashim bin Abdullah Yamani, the head of Saudi Arabia's negotiating team in charge of his country's bid to join the WTO. He said this round of 'decisive' negotiations which the Saudi technical negotiating team had with its U.S. counterpart for almost five months, finally led to success, thanks to the almighty God. "This success is also the result of the visit of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and his meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush in Texas three months ago. The great success which has been achieved in the negotiations, has also come on the eve of the participation of Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, the Deputy Premier, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General, in the United Nations General Assembly's meetings in New York," Yamani added. This brings to 38 the number of countries which signed bilateral agreements with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to pave the way for its accession to the WTO, he said. Dr Yamani said the new systems and executive statutes recently issued in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in all investment, commercial, financial and economic fields have had a great effect in facilitating the admission of the Kingdom to WTO. It is worth mentioning that these systems have direct relation with the basic agreements of WTO like the agreements of protection of rights of intellectual property and import licenses.
