Brussels, 17/02/2010 (Agence Europe) - Algeria, which is experiencing the desire to re-negotiate or revise the association agreement in place between it and the EU since 2005 (EUROPE 10069 and 10071), is not prepared to join the WTO at any price. As its Trade Minister, El Hachemi Djaaboub, stated in an interview with the national press agency APS on the 12th of February, the Algerian government takes the view that it is not appropriate, at this stage, to respond to the requests made by the EU with regard to Algeria's accession to the organisation governing global trade. After 10 rounds of multilateral negotiations (the most recent on 17 January 2008), which led Algeria to field no fewer than 1600 questions regarding its economic system and to hold 93 bilateral meetings with 21 countries, the process of accession to the WTO, which was launched in 1987, is somewhat at stalemate. This is apparently due to the 96 questions put in 2008 and 2009 by the EU and the United States, with which Algeria has yet to conclude bilateral agreements at the WTO on access to the market for goods and services (and also with Australia, Canada, South Korea, Ecuador, Japan, Malaysia, Norway and Turkey), focusing on various issues of sensitive dossiers, such as setting prices, double gas prices, import licences, sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, imports of second-hand cars, value-added tax, export subsidies and State trading enterprises. The reforms called for by the member countries of the WTO each of these issues could, in Algeria's view, have "negative repercussions" on the economy of the country. Therefore, the Algerian authorities, who have spoken out against what they describe as the double standards of the WTO member countries towards them, in that they grant themselves latitude but are extremely demanding with those knocking on their door, are not prepared to compromise on these issues for the sole reason of satisfying the requirements of the WTO member countries as regards commercial overtures for their goods and services. "Algeria does wish to join the WTO, but not at any price", the Algerian Prime Minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, warned in January. In the view of his colleague with responsibility for Energy and Mining, Chakib Khelil, there is no justification for revising the internal and external gas prices as called for by the WTO, for instance. On the grounds that "[it] does not want to become the junkyard for the vehicles of the member states of the WTO", their colleague with responsibility for Trade issues, El Hachemi Djaaboub, has stated that Algeria has no intention of giving up its second-hand vehicles import regime, which bans access to the Algerian market for vehicles more than three years old, as it has been requested to do by the WTO. (E.H./trans.fl)