By Jeremy Lovell

BRUSSELS, Oct 9 (Reuter) - China and the European Union agreed on Monday to step up work on Beijing's bid to join the World Trade Organisation.

"Both sides agreed to intensify their efforts to achieve an early satisfactory outcome in the accession talks," a joint statement said after a meeting between Chinese Minister for Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation, Wu Yi, and European Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan.

Wu told a news conference China was willing and able to take on the multiple trade obligations that membership of the WTO entails, but stressed that it had to be treated as a developing rather than a developed nation.

"We think the WTO needs China and China needs the WTO...But we must request the recognition of China's developing country status," she said.

"After nine years of efforts we feel we have basically met the conditions of WTO membership. But the timetable now rests with discussions among the contracting parties (WTO members) not with China," she added.

Brittan underlined the EU's support for China's membership of the WTO - the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - but said a number of important issues had to be cleared up before he would be prepared to push the issue.

"There were a number of aspects, seven to be precise, about Chinese development that I raised with Madame Wu Yi," he said. He refused to give details, but said that the possibility of a period of transition to full membership was an option.

"If the moment arrives when China fully meets the EU position...then we will of course seek to persuade others that it is a reasonable basis for China's membership of the WTO. But I stress that we are not there yet," he said.

Brittan said he had also raised the issue of China's human rights record, particularly in Tibet, an item that Wu agreed had been mentioned but stressed had not been discussed.

The meeting, a decade after China and the EU signed a trade and co-operation agreement, also ranged over a number of bilateral trade issues, in particular agriculture, but came to no concrete conclusions.

Wu and Brittan discussed the European Commission's strategy paper on enhancing EU-China long-term relations, which Wu welcomed as evidence that the ties were developing in the right direction.

"The Chinese government attaches great importance to the position of the EU in the world," she said. "We are willing to establish a long-term, durable relationship with the EU."

As proof of the mutual interest China and the EU had in each other, Wu cited the 43 project deals worth a total of $1.2 billion she said were signed at a special EU-China business meeting in Brussels at the end of last week.

At that meeting, Wu chided EU businesses for lagging their competitors in investing in China, a message that she obviously felt had got home.

"These figures illustrate the strong development of interest that EU business has in the Chinese market," she said on Monday.