Bush-Putin pact paves way for Russia's membership in WTO.

U.S. investment in Russia is on the rise and can be expected to increase, thanks to an agreement signed last month in Hanoi, Vietnam, by President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bush, in Hanoi for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, announced that the United States is dropping its opposition to Russia's membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). U.S. opposition was the last major impediment to Russia's WTO accession, and Russia is expected to formally join the WTO in 2007.

Writing in the English-language Moscow Times on December 4, U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Burns praised the Bush-Putin Hanoi agreement as "the single biggest achievement in economic relations between our two countries in over a decade."

Bush and Putin, who appeared together at the summit dressed in matching traditional Vietnamese silk tunics, have been pals since their first meeting in Slovenia in 2001. At that summit, Bush famously said of Putin, a cold, authoritarian KGB careerist: "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.... I was able to get a sense of his soul."