6th working group meetings between Yemen, WTO to start soon

SANA'A, July 02 (Saba) - The meetings of the sixth working group
between a government delegation and World Trade Organization (WTO)
member states will start on Friday in Geneva.

Minister of Industry and Trade Yahya al-Mutawakil will lead the
Yemeni side in the negotiation to join the WTO, the weekly 26
September reported.

Bilateral meetings will be held on Thursday with main WTO's members
(Canada, Australia and South Korea) prior to the multilateral
negotiations to be held on Friday.

Yemeni government signed Last June an agreement with of European
Union regarding finalizing negotiations to join Yemen's accession to
the international organization.

Al-Mutawakil said that the Yemeni delegation will held talks with
officials of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD) and World Organization of Intellectual Property Rights in
order to get a technical assistance to support Yemeni steps for the
accession.

Yemeni government has exerted an important efforts and economic
reforms to joint to (WTO).

In February 1998, the Yemeni Cabinet decreed forming a government
committee grouping representatives from the Ministries of then
Supplies and Trade, Planning, Industry and Finance, in addition to a
Central Bank of Yemen representative. The committee was assigned to
study requirements to join the WTO and determine practical steps for
the accession objective.

In the same year, the government presented its program to
Parliament, for the first time incorporating WTO accession into it.
That was followed by a decision issued by the prime minister to form
a national committee to prepare and negotiate with the WTO.

In 1999, Yemen requested observer member status in the WTO and was
accepted. A year later, Yemen applied for full membership, with its
application unanimously accepted at the organization's April 2000
General Council meeting.

In July 2000, the WTO set up a working party to consider procedures
and steps Yemen must follow to be granted full membership status.

The WTO's first demand was that Yemen prepared a memorandum on its
commercial policies, a request Yemen completed and presented to the
organization's secretariat in November 2002. The WTO's accession
section studied the memorandum's contents concerning Yemen's accord
with required conditions and then accepted it.

Thus, some WTO member states began to put forth questions and
queries, most of which were from the United States, the European
Union, Canada and Australia. Such questions numbered 167. Yemen
answered all of them, returning them to the organization in 2004,
which prepared the stage for beginning the first steps to negotiate
WTO accession.

MD/AF