Foreign Ministry Gives Top Priority to WTO Membership in 2006

Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs will give top priority to the target of joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the year of 2006, announced Deputy Foreign Minister Le Cong Phung on the ministry’s website recently.

 

The ministry will boost negotiation activities to achieve the WTO’s ticket as soon as possible, and also positively prepare for the post WTO accession period, the senior diplomat noted.

 

Earlier this week, Trade Minister Truong Dinh Tuyen also announced on Vietnamese Television that the country will make its utmost efforts to join the WTO this year, but he stressed that no fixed date will be set by the Vietnamese government.

 

Vietnam has yet to wrap up negotiations with six countries, including three tough ones namely the US, Australia and New Zealand.

 

Though the country has received pledges from the leaders of the remaining partners to totally back its bid to join the Geneva-based trade body, Vietnam has received no significant concessions from them at the negotiation table.

 

Besides, a number of senior trade officials in Vietnam raised their voices in protest about the USA’s lack of flexibility on several issues with Vietnam, namely it imposing conditions that are too high for a developing economy such as asking the countries to open their telecommunication market to each other, and to strictly execute Intellectual Property Rights along with other hash conditions.

 

Vietnam applied to join the WTO in 1995 and initially targeted to hit the objective at the WTO’s sixth Ministerial Meeting held in Hong Kong in December last year, but it failed to achieve the goal.

 

To date, Vietnam has wrapped up WTO talks with some 23 partners among the total of 28 partners. Youth, Vietnam Panorama