Russia seeks Obama’s help to clear WTO hurdles

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev yesterday called for Moscow's swift entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and urged the US administration to support its bid.

"We should have been in the WTO a long time ago," Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported Medvedev as saying.

He urged the Obama administration to help speed up Moscow's accession to the trade body to help liberalise the flow of global commerce.

''We very much count on the position of the new administration in order to push through the WTO accession,'' Medvedev told a leading US think tank, the Brookings Institution, after the end of a two-day nuclear security summit.

''We want to enter the WTO, but this needs to be done quickly,'' he said adding that US President Barack Obama had promised last year to help advance the issue.

''But, unfortunately, there have been no results so far...we are really counting on support to force Russia's WTO accession," he said.