MOSCOW, Sept 18 (Reuters) - The failure of last week's global World Trade Organisation summit means Russia should be able to join the WTO without first having to liberalise its own trade rules, Russia's main WTO negotiator said on Thursday.
Russia, the only major state outside the WTO, has been negotiating for entry since 1993, but Moscow and the WTO still disagree on foreign companies' access to the country's banking, insurance and telecoms markets as well as state subsidies to agriculture and import tariffs in the sector.
Other stumbling blocks are Russia's import tariffs for automobile and aviation industry goods, low domestic prices for gas and electricity and currency regulations.
"We have room for manoeuvre. We thought the (global) talks would be completed before 2005, but now the general view is that this round of talks will be extended," Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Maxim Medvedkov told a news conference. "So now we have more time to join the WTO."
The global talks held in the Mexican city of Cancun ended on Sunday without an agreement on new trade negotiation goals.
The Russian government has hoped to complete entry talks in 2003, although later acknowledged differences between it and the WTO were too serious for the 2003 deadline.
Medvedkov said the new target to finalise talks was the end of this year with a goal of entry in 2006.
"We are counting on completing (entry) negotiations before the end of the current (global) round of talks. In this case new rules will not concern us," Medvedkov said.
He said that Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref would hold talks with EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy in October when Russia hoped to solve some problems.
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