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Iran says being 'unfairly blocked' from joining WTO

BANGKOK: Iran wants to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) but is being "unfairly blocked" on political grounds, the country's Commerce Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari said on Tuesday.

"We want to become a member of the WTO, but our officials in Geneva have come to the clear conclusion that our application is being blocked by certain parties," he told a news conference in a clear reference to the United States.

"This is unfair and discriminatory, and is an insult to the international community," declared the minister, who is heading Iran's delegation to the meeting of the UN trade and development agency UNCTAD.

Shariatmadari said Iran had first applied to join the five-year-old WTO's predecessor but had later been told the official document had been lost and was asked to file a new application.

"We found that very strange, but we did it," he said. However, since then "some countries" were pressuring the WTO's Secretariat to ensure that the request was not considered by the trade body's ruling General Council, he said.

The Geneva-based WTO currently has 135 member countries, and some 30 more are in the process of negotiating entry.

Among these the biggest is China, widely expected to get in this year after nearly 14 years of talks. Over much of this period, Beijing accused the United States of keeping it out on political grounds.

Other major applicants currently in the queue are Russia, Ukraine and Saudi Arabia. Under the WTO's consensus rules, any member can block decisions -- including on whether to consider applications or not.

Shariatmadari said the process should be simplified, especially for developing countries, and that discrimination against applicants for any reason should be barred.

He said Iran felt membership of the WTO, bringing it under the WTO's open trading rules designed to give all members equal access to global markets, would help it develop its industrial and agricultural base and diversify exports.

"But our voice would also be heard in favour of the developing countries and especially the least-developed countries," he said. "If the WTO wants to be representative of the world, it should keep no one out."

Developing countries already make up around three quarters of the WTO's membership, which unlike UNCTAD is not a U.N. agency but a separate inter-governmental body and the key forum for trade negotiations and rule-setting.

The Iranian minister said the current system in which global economic policy was dominated by the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO allowed major powers -- another reference to the United States -- to try to enforce their own will outside their borders.

"Therefore we feel there should be a mother-organisation, and UNCTAD is it. We should strengthen it and rebuild it as a negotiating and policy-making forum," he said. Other bodies would then have to observe its decisions.

Some militant non-governmental groupings bitterly critical of the WTO, the IMF and the Bank have voiced similar ideas at this week's UNCTAD conference, but have won no support even from developing countries.

"I respect Iran, but I am afraid they are whistling in the wind if that's what they want. The idea will never fly, and I'm not sure that it should," said one senior Asian trade diplomat.-Reuters