MOSCOW: President Vladimir V. Putin, in a wide-ranging news conference Monday, spelled out his aim to join the World Trade Organization by 2004, and said his overarching priority is to grow Russia’s economy and bind it to the global economic system.

At the two-hour-plus session in a Kremlin auditorium — only the second full-fledged news conference of his presidency — Putin dwelt on economic issues.

He said his dizzying recent diplomatic forays, including back-to-back meetings with President Bush, several conferences of Asian powers and summits with the European Union and with Baltic leaders, were aimed at improving the financial well-being of the state.

“For a country that used to be an antagonist or enemy of most of the world’s industrialized nations, Russia should become a partner — moreover an equal partner. This is the paramount mission of Russian foreign policy,” said Putin, seated on stage against the blue-white-and-red colours of the Russian flag.

His comments were bluntest when it came to WTO membership. He challenged a reporter who suggested most Russian businesses were afraid of joining the 144-member organization and facing tough international competition that could throw workers at inefficient enterprises out of their jobs.

“Russia today is the only major world country outside WTO — the only one,” Putin said sharply. “The WTO countries account for 90 percent of the world economy. ... Staying outside ... is dangerous and silly.”

Putin said Russia seeks to be a member of the WTO by 2004 so that it will be able to take part in the anticipated next round of negotiations on revising the trade organization’s rules.

“If Russia is not a member by that time, this (negotiation) will take place without us and will be most likely to create additional difficulties for Russia’s accession to the WTO,” he said.

Putin spoke just two days before the start of meetings in Canada among the seven most industrialized countries and Russia, where Putin is expected to push his country’s WTO candidacy.

Russia has been negotiating entry into the WTO since 1995, but the talks have been moving in fits and starts, with disagreements remaining over how Russia can protect its financial institutions and telecommunications industries.

Putin said part of the problem is that Russia lacks enough experts who can deal with hammering out the minutia of a WTO accord. China, which joined the WTO last year, had 1,000 people working on the issue, he said, while Russia has only a few dozen.

Russia’s ambitions to join the WTO were buoyed by decisions by the United States and the European Union within the past month to categorize Russia as a free-market country.

Taking advantage of the nationally televised news conference to sell Russians on the advantages of membership, Putin said joining would bring Russia into “the legal structures of the civilized world.”

“It will have a considerable benefit on the economy, on the social and political spheres of the country, even on the level of (financial) crime,” he asserted.

Joining the WTO is favoured by Russian exporters “because joining WTO removes all the impediments and barriers ... to their business,” Putin argued. The only ones opposed, he said, are “those who consider themselves not competitive as yet.” —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times