Susan Schwab said in Washington earlier Tuesday that the U.S. Congress is unprepared to rescind a law limiting trade with Russia because Moscow is making "slow progress" in its bid to join the 150-member global trade body.
Sergei Prikhodko told a RIA Novosti press conference that the results Russia has achieved in certain sectors testify that it is not lagging behind dozens of other WTO member states.
"And in this connection, such a statement, which demands clarification, arouses certain questions," he said.
The U.S. adopted the Jackson-Vanik amendment in 1974 tying trade with the former Soviet Union to the rights of Jews to emigrate from the country. The amendment, which has been lifted for many of Russia's former Communist allies, is hampering Russia's long desired accession to the World Trade Organization.
In contrast to Schwab's statement, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez said in Moscow last week that the decision to annul the amendment would be adopted by U.S. Congress, although he did not specify a date.
Moscow has signed bilateral protocols with all but four WTO members and has yet to complete multilateral talks with its trading partners within the organization, which Russia hopes to join by the end of the year.
Prikhodko said Russia hopes that the prolongation of talks on its admission to the WTO is not related to the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran by Russian specialists.
"I hope that assumptions about the artificial extension of talks with Russia [on the WTO] and interested countries connected with the Iranian issue are only assumptions," he said.
A journalist noted that Russia and the U.S. had essentially overcome all roadblocks in bilateral WTO talks, but that once Russia made clear that it would continue building the Bushehr NPP, the U.S. began hindering its admission to the global trade body. The journalist asked Prikhodko to comment.
However, Prikhodko advised the journalist to address his question to the U.S., saying he could only voice Russia's position.
"This cooperation between Russia and Iran does not fall under any sanctions, as it is being implemented within the framework of procedures used by the IAEA," he said.
The $1 billion Bushehr project being built under a 1995 contract was in jeopardy after Russia's Atomstroyexport, the general contractor, said that Tehran had not made any payments for the NPP's construction since mid-January, and that by the fourth quarter of 2006 the project had only received 60% of the required funding.
On March 26, Atomstroyexport announced that Tehran had resumed financing of the Bushehr nuclear power plant and that it had received the first payment from Iran, but reiterated that Russia expected future payments on time to avoid further construction delays.
The Bushehr project implemented under the supervision of the UN nuclear watchdog was originally scheduled for commissioning at the end of 2006, but the date has been postponed five times.
The project was originally started by Germany's Siemens in 1975, but work stopped following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
