WTO meets on Russia accession bid

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GENEVA, Sept 18 (AFP): The World Trade Organisation (WTO) meets today on Russia's long running bid for membership, with the talks likely to be difficult after its Georgian intervention stoked tensions with the West, analysts and diplomats said.
Officially, the meeting is part of the process, begun in 1993, for admitting Moscow to the global trade body and should be routine. But a lot has changed since the last such gathering in June.
A more assertive Russia has been demanding a greater say in how the world is run and has taken a much harder line, especially on the stationing of US missile defence systems in Eastern Europe and mooted NATO membership for the Ukraine and Georgia.
Pouring troops into Georgia in early August as Tbilisi tried to win back control of breakaway South Ossetia, Moscow has insisted that it will set the agenda in the region and will brook no interference in defence of its national interests.
Russia has since questioned loudly why its admission to the WTO has taken so long and the issue risks being caught up in the growing tensions with the West. "The meeting will be a test of their (Russia and members') commitments (over its membership)," a trade source said.
On Wednesday, the European Union affirmed that it supported a membership which is "in (its) economic interest and that of Russia."