MOSCOW, June 17 (Reuters) - Russia wants the World Trade Organisation to protect its growing interests abroad, a change of approach from when it looked to the WTO to prop up its struggling economy, the country's chief negotiator said.

    The change is testament to the transformation of its economy since it started negotiations to join the global trade watchdog in 1995, WTO negotiator Maxim Medvedkov told Reuters.

    Then, it was still reeling from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, it is the world's 10th largest economy, running over $0.5 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, and enjoying nine years of oil-fuelled economic boom.

    Russia, the biggest economy still outside the WTO, says it could join in a matter of months.

    "In the 1990s we viewed the WTO as a way to stabilise the situation inside the country. Now we regard it more and more as an instrument for securing our long-term economic interests outside the country," said Medvedkov.

    Medvedkov said Russia, which wants to diversify its economy away from the dominant oil and gas sectors, needed the WTO to carve out a niche for exporting goods and services with higher added value in the global market, such as planes and data services.

    "The WTO creates a legal framework for trade in high value-added goods. The higher the added value, the stronger the competition, the more we need rules of the game," he said.

    Medvedkov said after 13 years of painstaking negotiations on joining the WTO, Russia was now in the finishing stretch.

    "We call on our partners to focus on a last spurt. Everyone is going to lose if the talks drag on. We can wrap up the negotiation in two or three months if we focus. If we don't, it could be another year," Medvedkov said.

    Hurdles remain to Russia's accession, including disputes with the European Union over timber, and a row with Georgia over Moscow's support for two Georgian separatist regions.

    The European Union has accused Russia of violating a 2004 bilateral deal when it raised duties on raw timber exports.

    Russia says the duties are to protect its resurgent wood processing industry, but the increase hurts the interests of large wood processing firms in EU members Finland and Sweden.

    "We are now thinking what to do next... There are different options. None of them can be considered the final one," said Medvedkov.

    He accused the EU of hurting Russia's interests through its chemicals regulation.

    "We have done all they wanted us to do, now they are slapping this new regulation upon us," Medvedkov said referring to a new EU directive which covers some 30,000 substances produced in and imported into the EU.

    Russia still has to negotiate with the WTO its plans to inject about $9 billion into the modernisation of its agriculture sector by 2011.

    "I do not think there will be problems. Our demands are in line with the WTO philosophy, most of the money we requested

 will be spent in a way that does not distort trade," he said.

    A WTO working group on Russia's accession began the latest round of talks on June 16.

    Russia's neighbour Georgia is blocking the talks and demanding Russia rescind a presidential instruction which established special links between Moscow and Georgia's separatist Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions.

    Tbilisi said the instruction amounted to a de facto annexation of the regions by Moscow. But Medvedkov said Georgia had failed to explain how the instruction contradicts WTO rules.

    "For the time being, our main method is persuasion. Most of the working group members are convinced the WTO is not a place for political infighting," he said.

 (Editing by Christian Lowe and Janet Lawrence)