Brussels / Moscow, 10/10/2003 (Agence Europe) - There is nothing abusive in what the Union is asking of Russia in the negotiations aimed at specifying the terms of this country's accession to the World Trade Organisation, it was said on Friday at the European Commission, thinking back to the accusations launched the day before in Moscow. "We are not calling on the Russians to make unreasonable concessions and we are not seeking to impose obligations on them other than the WTO obligations, or influence decisions to be taken at national level", the spokesman for Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said. Pascal Lamy is expected to visit Moscow on 16 October. President Vladimir Putin himself leapt to the defence of his policies shortly after holding a new negotiation session in Brussels. He denounced the "unjustified and dishonest" position of the Union concerning the liberalisation of the Russian energy market (see EUROPE of 8 October, p.11). "The day will come", he said, "when we shall have to adopt international prices but we shall do it stage by stage" as the "Russian energy industry is inherited from the Soviet past and cannot adopt international prices from one day to the next, otherwise the whole of the Russian economy would collapse". He became annoyed saying "either the European bureaucrats do not understand this or they wish to prevent Russia entering the WTO", all the more as it is "not proper", in his view, to speak of energy prices in the context of negotiations on accession to the WTO. This problem must be tackled at the same time as negotiations with the Union, he added, a reference, it seems, to the work in progress on the Euro-Russian energy partnership idea.