Reuters | By Alan Wheatley, Asia Economics Correspondent
KYOTO, Japan - The European Union's trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, said on Thursday he would go to China soon to resume talks on its application to join the World Trade Organisation.
Lamy's readiness to visit China appeared to indicate some significant progress may have been made because officials have previously said Lamy would not join the talks until negotiations were far enough advanced.
"I myself will be going to China in the coming weeks in order to try and push this forward," Lamy told a conference of EU and Japanese journalists by videolink from Brussels.
His spokesman Anthony Gooch later told a news briefing in Brussels that a probable date had been fixed.
"My information is that we will be going to Beijing in the week of the March 27," Gooch said. "We are going there in the hope that we will be able to finalise a bilateral deal."
Last month, a round of intensive negotiations in Beijing between China and the European Union on the Asian giant's 14-year quest to join the WTO ended with no agreement.
Lamy declined to spell out the stumbling blocks but said progress needed to be made first on a number of technical issues before the EU and China could concentrate on the non-technical aspects of the talks.
"I am confident that we will be going in this direction," he said.
He described the negotiations as difficult but said Beijing and Brussels were united in wanting China to join the WTO.
EU sources have said it may not be necessary for the EU and China to hold another formal round because if China indicated it could meet the EU's market-opening demands, the talks could move to the "political" level where Lamy would get involved.
The 15-nation EU is the biggest trade power that has yet to reach a market-opening agreement with China to allow it to join the 135-member WTO. The United States, Japan, Canada and many other countries reached separate agreements with Beijing last year.
Lamy said last week that some technical and tariff issues, including mobile telecommunications and life insurance, remained to be sorted out before he holds talks with Beijing.
European Union officials held four days of talks in Beijing last month on a market-opening pact. The agreement with the EU is the highest hurdle China must overcome to attain its dream of joining the WTO.
EU officials have previously suggested Lamy could join the talks when they are close to agreement.
Chinese negotiators were due to visit Geneva, the WTO's headquarters, in March for talks aimed at clearing remaining barriers to joining the WTO and to present a report on what China has done to come into line with the trade body's rules.
EU sources have said a key sticking point was a European demand for 51 percent foreign ownership rights in Chinese mobile telephone networks, which would go beyond the 49 percent the United States agreed to in its WTO deal with China in November.Reuters:
