French President Jacques Chirac said Monday China could join the WTO within weeks but he also accepted Beijing objected to parts of the Sino-EU trade deal it signed in May.
Contradicting comments by senior EU officials and diplomats, Chirac said he believed China could join the Geneva-based World Trade Organization by the end of the year.
"We think accession could come before the end of the year, that is our thinking at the moment," Chirac told a press conference after the China-EU summit in Beijing.
Chirac said he believed Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji would work to clear up disagreements over the granting of seven insurance licenses for European companies in China.
The EU is upset China gave European insurers just two of seven new licenses it agreed to issue within 60 days of the Sino-EU trade deal in May. China has since denied agreeing to the 60 day timeframe.
"We agreed (with Zhu) on the necessity of sorting out the last remaining problems as quickly as possible so that accession can take place in the coming weeks," said Chirac.
Chirac said the Chinese had "technical" reservations about granting the new insurance licenses but that he was confident Zhu's political intervention would clear up the problem.
"We hope China will respect its commitments under the terms originally agreed. The intervention of the Prime Minister should see the problem sorted out," he said.
China's 14-year bid for WTO membership is entering the final stretch but has become bogged down in multilateral talks with WTO officials in Geneva. Diplomats and WTO officials have said the process is unlikely to be completed by the end of the year.
Speaking at the same press conference as Chirac, European Commission President Romano Prodi cast doubt on whether China would seal WTO membership in 2000.
"It is not easy before the end of the year, but we are trying. There is an effort to mobilize our technical groups to be ready in time," he said.
EU foreign and security policy chief Javier Solana on Sunday also suggested China would not finalize membership until sometime next year.
In addition to the insurance licenses, the EU is concerned about a range of other issues including intellectual copyright, the transparency of the judicial system and subsidies for state-owned enterprises, diplomats said.— (AFP)
© Agence France Presse 2000
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
