Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergi Kananadze said Oct. 27 that his country had accepted a Swiss-brokered proposal to end its block of Russia's accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Earlier in the day, the head of the Russian delegation in Geneva, Maxim Medvedkov, said talks had failed because Georgia was linking Russia's bid to a "territorial dispute" between the two countries — specifically, Russia's occupation of the Georgian secessionist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which together 20 percent of Georgia's territory. But there seems to have been a last-minute shift in Georgia, which suddenly dropped its demand for Russian forces to leave those regions. As the largest economy in the world not part of the WTO, Russia has sought membership in the group for nearly two decades, but in recent years Georgia has stood firmly in the way.