After six years of negotiations, Russia clinched a landmark deal with the European Union on the terms for its entry to the World Trade Organization, reports The Wall Street Journal. The agreement came after the two sides compromised on the contentious issue of Russian natural-gas prices. As an apparent reward for the EU’s backing, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his most explicit endorsement yet of the Kyoto Protocol, the global pact for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions that can come into force only with Russia’s ratification. Russian officials denied Moscow had used the Kyoto treaty as a bargaining chip in its WTO negotiations with Europe. Before Friday, Russia appeared to be leaning toward rejecting the treaty, with a top Kremlin adviser warning it would curb Russia’s economic growth.

The deal was a milestone for Russia’s road to the 147-member WTO, which Moscow applied to join 11 years ago, and a boost for President Putin’s plan to integrate Russia into the world economy. Still, obstacles remain. Russia must conclude agreements with any WTO members that demand them, and has to negotiate deals with other big trading partners, such as China and Japan. Diplomats say talks with them could drag on well into next year. The US has said it still is a long way from reaching a WTO-accession deal with Russia. Diplomats say that in an election year there will be little political will to achieve one.

In the end, Pascal Lamy, the EU trade commissioner, said the deal reached was „a compromise which takes into account the red lines on both sides.“ Russia said it gradually would raise domestic gas prices to industrial consumers between $27 and $28 per 1,000 cubic meters to $49 to $57 by 2010-prices that officials said were in line with the government’s own energy strategy. The export price for Russian natural gas is about $120 a thousand cubic meters.

The Financial Times adds Russia also agreed to open its telecommunications, transport and financial services sectors to foreign competition, and reduce average tariffs to no more than 8 percent on industrial goods, 11 percent on fishery products and 13 percent for agriculture.

The Washington Post and the Calgary Herald (Canada) note that the arrangement appeared to end an impasse that had long held up both Russia’s integration into the world economy and enactment of the plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. European countries have been eager to win Russia’s ratification of Kyoto, and they made significant concessions in the trade talks to obtain it. Ever since the United States backed out of the Kyoto pact after President George W. Bush took office in 2001, Russia has held the treaty’s fate in its hands.

The Guardian explains that the Russian parliament, in which the pro-Putin bloc holds a two-thirds majority, will now be expected to ratify the [Kyoto] treaty. To come into effect, Kyoto has to be ratified by countries responsible for 55 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. Since the US, responsible for 24 percent of the gases, turned its back on the treaty in 2001, Russia, responsible for 17 percent, has become an essential participant.

The New York Times (05/22) notes that the Bush administration welcomed the news that Russia and the European Union had reached an agreement on Russia’s entry into the WTO but cautioned against concluding that Russia would sign the Kyoto Protocol as part of the bargain. „We have not been informed of any such decision,“ said Sean McCormick, a spokesman for the National Security Council.