Putin Working to Make Russia ‘Equal Partner’ in World Market

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 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% 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 minutiae 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 said.

Joining the WTO is favored by Russian exporters “because joining WTO removes all the impediments and barriers ... to their business,” Putin said. The only ones opposed, he said, are “those who consider themselves not competitive as yet.”

But Putin chided Russia’s trading partners for sometimes preaching free trade and practicing protectionism when it comes to Russian steel and agricultural products. He noted that Russia had recently managed to have a surplus of 5 million tons of grain to export for the first time in 80 years.

“So what happened? The European Union immediately introduced a prohibitive tax. What does this amount to if not a restriction on market entry for Russian goods?”

Such self-interest is just a fact of life in world trade, he said, but Russia must stay “consistently” engaged in negotiations to protect its markets.

Putin, relaxed before about 450 journalists, many of whom had been shipped in from Russian provinces at the Kremlin’s expense, said he was holding the news conference to sum up the year’s activities before the summer holidays.

He commented on a number of other domestic issues--including his hope to help restore normality in war-torn Chechnya through a constitutional referendum there next year--and international topics, such as Russia’s opposition to any move to oust Yasser Arafat.

In a personal aside, he said his main advantage as president has been an innate understanding of the mind-set of common Russians.

“I may have lived in the presidential residence for two years, but for nearly 30 years I lived in a communal apartment in Leningrad, even when I was a KGB officer,” he said. “I know very well what ordinary Russians live through.”

In a similar vein, when a British journalist tried to find out who were the chief thinkers or advisors behind Putin’s military and security policies, the president riposted: “The Russian people.”