By Robert Evans
GENEVA, March 21 (Reuters) - World Trade Organisation (WTO) member countries on Tuesday set a mid-May date for a major push on finalising China's 13-year bid to win admission to the body.
But senior trade officials said the vast mass of documentation that had to be processed made it unlikely that Chinese accession could be formally agreed until the autumn.
Speaking after a two-day meeting of the WTO working party on the issue, China's chief WTO negotiator Long Yongtu told reporters he recognised there was still "a huge task" ahead.
Long said China was working hard to wrap up bilateral agreements with 10 WTO members -- including the European Union -- which had yet to complete their own pacts with Beijing.
"I think everyone is very optimistic that we have come to the final stage," he declared. He said China would do its utmost to be ready for the next meeting, set for May 8-15.
The bilateral deals, so far completed with 27 major countries, have to be "multilateralised" in the WTO, ensuring that all members enjoy the same terms of access to the Chinese market and that China has equal access to theirs.
Trade envoys attending the working party meeting, open to all 135 WTO members, said they believed that if the EU reached a deal in Beijing next week the process would speed up.
EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy is due in China on March 27. "We hope things are going to move quickly in the next two weeks," said senior Brussels official Karl Falkenberg who was in Geneva for the meeting.
"It is really looking like the end-game."
But Long, a fluent English speaker, suggested that Beijing was very unlikely to give more to the EU than it had to the United States in negotiations that ended last November.
"China could not give to one partner what it had not been able to promise to another," he said when asked if Beijing might meet EU wishes for more openings on telecommunications and financial services.
Long also declined to envisage the possibility that Congress might refuse to approve a key part of the accord with the United States -- the granting of permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status.
"I don't see any reason why Congress won't pass that," he said.
Hard-line anti-Chinese Republican congressmen and some Democrats responding to pressure from human rights groups and labour unions have indicated they will oppose the measure, currently expected to come up for vote at the end of May.
PNTR would mean China would not have to face the annual Congressional vote on whether to renew its most-favoured nation (MFN) status -- a status all WTO members are expected to extend to each other.
Long said tying MFN to China's human rights record "would be a linkage that is not in the interests of any WTO member." He added: "It would certainly not be in the interests of the U.S. business community."
The United States is seeking support for a resolution condemning Beijing at the United Nations Human Rights Commission which opened a session in Geneva on Monday. But administration officials say this has no connection to the WTO process.
Beijing has said that if PNTR were not approved, China would not open its markets for goods and services to the United States, giving other WTO members a major advantage.
U.S. administration officials have indicated there would be no attempt to block China's WTO entry if this scenario developed, and also argue that a "no" vote in Congress would be a major setback to U.S. firms eyeing the vast Chinese market.:
