July 05, 2006	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Sani 8, 1427

MOSCOW, July 4: Russia will stop adhering to rules set by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) if it is not formally admitted to the group, President Vladimir Putin said here on Tuesday.

“If for some reason we cannot reach agreement” on WTO membership, “we will no longer be responsible under accords that we have not only approved but that we are fulfilling, despite the fact that we are not a member of this organisation,” Putin was quoted by news agencies as saying.

Speaking at a meeting with international trade and business leaders, Mr Putin noted that Russia had not yet been admitted to the WTO and stressed that the only country still refusing to endorse Russian membership in the trade body was the United States.

“We believe that conditions in the functioning of the Russian economy are more open and liberal than they are in several other WTO member states,” Mr Putin was quoted by Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies as saying.

The Russian president stressed that new national legislation to strengthen protection of intellectual property rights -- Russia has regularly been criticised for tolerating piracy -- had been formally adopted and the problem was now one of implementation of these laws.

However enforcement of intellectual property protection laws was a problem not just for Russia but also for other countries, especially developing economies, and Mr Putin said the issue would be addressed at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Saint Petersburg July 15-17.

Asked to comment on the current Doha round of WTO trade negotiations, Mr Putin said that Russia would not be opposed to removing agricultural subsidies.

“This is not problem for us at the moment,” he said, noting that Russian agricultural subsidies were close to nil anyway. Countries that heavily subsidize their agricultural sectors, he said, were not helping create a level global economic playing field.

WTO membership for Russia has been a cherished Putin economic goal since he entered the Kremlin in 2000 and Moscow has been involved for years in painstaking bilateral talks with WTO member states, all of which have backed Moscow joining the world trade body -- except the United States.—AFP