02/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - Russian WTO membership - Georgia takes firmer line. Reacting to contrary statements by his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vachadzé warned on 28 April that Russia cannot join the WTO without Georgia's consent. After finalising bilateral agreements at the WTO on market access with 61 member nations, including the EU and the United States, bilateral discussions with Georgia are the last stumbling block to Russia's membership of the multilateral world trade organisation. “Georgia is not seeking to prevent Russia from joining the WTO but is trying to find a way out of the stupid situation that Russia created in 2008” after the lightning war between the two countries, the Georgian official said. Tbilisi makes Russian membership subject to the implementation of common customs structures on a dam on the River Psou in Abkhazia and in the Roki tunnel in South Ossetia, two Georgian breakaway provinces recognised by Moscow as independent states since the war. (E.H./transl.jl)