Developing countries have welcomed WTO proposals to reduce barriers to farm trade but voiced reservations on those calling for a further opening of their own markets for industrial goods.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has launched an investigation into Australia's decision to ban New Zealand apple imports.

The head of the World Trade Organisation marked sixty years of the multilateral global trading system on Tuesday with a warning against any revival of protectionism.

China said it would veto a World Trade Organization compromise for liberalizing global commerce in manufactured goods if it failed to shield Chinese industries from foreign competition, a threat that brought a stern response from the European Union.

Poland could block Russia's entry to the global trade organization if Moscow fails to lift the 2005 embargo on imports of agricultural products, a deputy agriculture minister said on Monday.

Russia has the backing of the United States in its bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), the economics minister, German Gref, said Friday.

Russia's envoy to a 21-nation Pacific Rim economic alliance said Australia and other countries in the region support Moscow's bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The WTO, on 27 July 2007 welcomed the Kingdom of Tonga as its newest member. Tonga applied for accession to the WTO in June 1995, but negotiations effectively started in April 2001.

Russia's delegation will begin Monday a new round of bilateral and multilateral talks on accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, and continue negotiations until July 27.

Director-General Pascal Lamy endorsed on 17 July 2007, the work of Agriculture negotiations Chairman Crawford Falconer and non-agricultural market access (NAMA) negotiations Chairman Don Stephenson in producing Doha Development Round compromise texts for trade in agriculture and industrial goods.

ICC strongly supports the issuance of compromise texts today by the heads of the Doha round agriculture and non-agricultural market access negotiating groups as a practical way forward to reach consensus in the World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Agenda.

Russia intends to sign documents on its accession to the World Trade Organization with Cambodia in the near future, a government official said Tuesday.