Russia Declares It Is Close to Joining the World Trade Organization

MOSCOW — After high-level meetings in Washington, Russian officials said Tuesday that they were on the brink of a deal that would allow Russia to become a member of the World Trade Organization after 18 years of halting negotiations, though hostility between Georgia and Russia remains a crucial sticking point. Russia’s accession to the organization has been a key goal of the “reset” between Russia and the United States, a reconciliation whose future is uncertain amid political change in both countries. Russia’s first deputy prime minister, Igor I. Shuvalov, said Tuesday that United States officials were vigorously advocating for Russia and that they were near a breakthrough. “We have Americans working 24 hours a day on our application in order to persuade other W.T.O. members that Russia should get membership before the end of the year,” Mr. Shuvalov said at a United States-Russia trade event in Chicago. “At the beginning of this year, very few people believed it was possible. Now we are very close to that.” United States officials offered similarly upbeat assessments. One said American officials “see every likelihood” that Russia could obtain membership in December. Russia has the largest economy of any country not in the 153-member trade group, and the World Bank says that as a member, Russia could bolster its annual gross domestic product as much as 11 percent over the long term, though noncompetitive industries might suffer. The repeated delays have frustrated Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who publicly chastised his officials this spring for complying with regulations of the group, telling them, “Why the hell should they admit us if we already observe everything?” A top Georgian official said it was premature to celebrate Russia’s accession. The trade group accepts members through a consensus system, meaning that Georgia, which joined in 2000, could block Russia. Although the organization could technically admit Russia through a vote of the majority, that type of accession has never happened. Russia and Georgia have remained in an icy standoff since they fought a war in 2008, and Russia’s military is deeply entrenched in the Georgian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The countries began negotiating in March, with Georgia asking for international observers to be posted on the Russian side of the enclaves’ borders. The countries have found no common ground, said Giga Bokeria, the secretary of Georgia’s National Security Council. Mr. Bokeria said the matter was a central topic of his meeting last week with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “We know our allies are interested in having Russia in the W.T.O., but there is a compromise that has to be reached first,” he said. “The ball is in their court.” The issue has taken on new significance with the news that Mr. Putin is poised to return to the presidency. Mr. Putin adopted a defiant posture toward the United States in his second presidential term and had little public role in the reset, though he clearly approved of the conciliatory tone set by President Dmitri A. Medvedev. Mr. Shuvalov said Tuesday that he had delivered a message to American officials from Mr. Putin. “Everyone in the United States should understand that we will not forget the reset,” Mr. Shuvalov said. In recent days, negotiators appear to have removed most of the remaining obstacles to Russia’s accession, including differences on meat imports, sanitary standards and incentives to Russian automobile producers. Andrei Slepnev, a deputy minister for economic development, said the burst of progress had surprised his team. “We see today that our accession process is at the very end of its final stage,” said Mr. Slepnev, in comments carried by the Interfax news service. Completing the process by December, he said, “is quite possible if the consensus and the mood achieved within the W.T.O. today are maintained.” Dominic Fean, a junior research fellow with the French Institute of International Relations, said agreements would have to be completed in the next few days if Russia were to join this year. Mr. Putin’s return to the presidency, he said, has made the outcome “more weighty.” “If it happens now, it’s a very different political signal in favor of integration,” Mr. Fean said. “It shows that Russian concerns about international standing, and about being present at the forums where important decisions are being made, have not gone away.” Andrew C. Kuchins, director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, emerged from Mr. Shuvalov’s speech in Chicago with the sense that the sides were “really close to the finish line,” including in negotiations between Georgia and Russia, he said. “There is not going to be a lot of support and sympathy at the end of the day if it were perceived that the Georgians were holding up W.T.O. accession,” Mr. Kuchins said. “The Russians have got to play ball and be flexible, too. The U.S. government has leaned way forward on this.” Failure to reach an agreement, he added, “would definitely be a blow to the bilateral relationship.”