Published time: June 20,
2014 15:15
Prime Minister Dmitry
Medvedev speaks at the plenary meeting of the St. Petersburg International
Legal Forum. (RIA Novosti/Dmitry Astakhov)
Moscow intends to present a
complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO) claiming ‘politically motivated’
US sanctions that target local companies are hurting Russian external trade and
violate WTO rules, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday.
"Unilateral politically
motivated sanctions are illegal from the point of view of classic international
legislation, they do not meet public order requirements as they ignore WTO's
statute mechanism of constraint," the Prime Minister
told an audience at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum.
In their latest round of sanctions, the US has tried to target Russia’s economy by
forbidding business with certain organisations, as well as asset freezes on
individuals believed to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Such sanctions violate
WTO rules, including the most favored nation status, as they show
discrimination to service providers and suppliers from another country and
violate restrictions of the second article of the WTO's General Agreement on
Trade in Services,” Medvedev said.
Europe, though hesitantly,
has followed the US sanction march
and produced its own Russian business blacklist.
Bilateral net trade between the two former
Cold War enemies is relatively small - at $38 billion in 2013, but Russia is
more worried about continuing good trade relations with Europe, which amounted
to $330 billion last year.
Medvedev said the US
sanctions will affect Russia’s external trade, adding he understood that
challenging the sanctions at the WTO “will be difficult because the US has both
doctrinal and practical authority in the organization.”
Russia, the world’s sixth
largest economy, became the 156th member of
the WTO in August 2012, the last of the G20 nations to join.
The 159 member WTO group
account for 97 percent of global trade.
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