GENEVA, Sept 18: Trade negotiators meeting here on Thursday steered clear of the main issues in Russia’s bid for WTO membership, agreeing to reconvene in November, as the US warned that Moscow’s accession bid was now in question.

With the relationship between Russia and western countries under strain since the Russian military surge into Georgia in August, the session lasted just over an hour and left the big questions for later.

But a western diplomatic source stressed that the session all along had been planned as a “meeting on procedure” to set the agenda for the rest of the year.

Talks are to resume in the week of Nov 3, he added.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice cast doubt on whether Russia, “increasingly authoritarian at home and aggressive abroad,” will continue to be brought into the global economic fold.

Rice said because of its Aug 7 invasion of Georgia and other behaviour, “Russia’s bid to join the WTO is now in question.” “And so too is its attempt to join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development,” she said according to excerpts released by the State Department ahead of her speech to the transatlantic German Marshall Fund.

A senior Russian negotiator said meanwhile that Russia might even benefit by remaining outside the WTO.

“In the short term, without the WTO, we will not die and might even gain something,” Maxim Medvedkov, the economy ministry’s top official for trade talks, said in an interview with the pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia.

“Whereas our partners will not get what they want,” Medvedkov added.

Russia is the largest economy that has still not been admitted to the WTO despite a drive for admittance begun in 1993.—AFP