GENEVA, May 26: The World Trade Organization’s 148 members on Thursday approved membership talks with Iran after the United States lifted its long-standing opposition to Tehran’s bid. The WTO said in a statement that the organisation’s ruling General Council decided to set up a working party to negotiate Iran’s accession.
The move in a meeting of trading nations came just a day after negotiations in Geneva between Iran and Britain, France and Germany resulted in a diplomatic deal to continue the talks on Iran’s controversial nuclear programme. The three European countries had repeatedly offered to help Iran’s bid for membership of the body that sets the rules for global commerce, in return for Tehran’s cooperation on the nuclear issue.
The United States had opposed Iran’s bids since 1996, blocking them at 21 successive meetings of the General Council, which requires a consensus to make decisions.
“We didn’t make a request today, we made a request nine years ago for our accession process to be started. It was blocked by the US. Then after nine years they accepted that,” Iran’s ambassador to the UN agencies in Geneva, Mohamed Reza Alborzi, said.
“They blocked it for political reasons. They unblocked it apparently for political reasons.” On Monday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that Washington had given its support to the European offer in March to help Iran gain admittance to the WTO, in exchange for assurances it would abandon its nuclear efforts.
But he added: “Obviously there are certain commitments you have to make when you seek to join the World Trade Organisation,” citing the nuclear issues as well as the need for “transparency” in Iran’s elections due on June 17.
In Tehran, Iran welcomed the decision taken by the 148 trading nations, which also allows it to gain a wider foothold in the trade system as an observer to the WTO.
“We think this is a positive step and development,” foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
“In the past months the Islamic Republic of Iran, in its negotiations with Europe and influential WTO countries, has stressed on the need to recognise Iran’s right to join this trade organisation,” he added.
In Brussels, the European Union also welcomed the decision, pointing out that it had supported the step all along. India’s ambassador to the WTO, Ujal Singh Bhatia said India “will be working with Iran towards its early accession”. The date of Iran’s eventual entry into the WTO is uncertain.
“I think negotiations will take time, as is natural with everybody — I think three or four years,” Alborzi said.
In the WTO, a decision to start accession talks simply signals the beginning of painstaking negotiations with individual governments, leading to a series of bilateral trade deals.
They are then combined into a single multilateral accord covering the WTO as a whole.
It took China 15 years to join the WTO after getting a green light to start talks, and negotiations with Russia have been under way for more than a decade. WTO members now need to establish a working party to negotiate with Iran.
“We have done our homework for the past years we have not waited until this decision was taken,” Alborzi said.
“The Iranian trade system and trade policy is more prepared for getting integrated into the WTO system, but it still it will take time.”—AFP
