The European Union, the United States and Russia will hold detailed ministerial talks next week on Moscow's bid to join the World Trade Organisation, Reuters cited diplomats as saying today. "This is a shift from the technical level to gauge the temperature at a high political level to see if the outstanding issues can be resolved soon," a diplomat familiar with preparations for the talks told Reuters. "They need to see if the negotiations have reached the end-game," he said. EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton, United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Russian Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina will meet in the margins of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, which starts on June 4. Russia, which has been trying for more than a decade to join the 153-member WTO, is the largest economy to remain outside the global trade watchdog. All WTO members must approve Russia's membership bid for the country to join. Next week's talks follow Tuesday's meeting of the WTO's working group on Russian WTO membership negotiations in Geneva which the chair described as "positive". "Some progress was made on the draft texts put forward by the Russian side spelling out commitments in six areas," Stefan Johannesson, who is also Iceland's envoy to the European Union told Reuters. "I think there is a certain sense of urgency, not least on the part of the Russian side, to try and speed things up." The EU and Russia also discussed Moscow's WTO membership application at a summit last week.
