RUSSIA: One of the Kremlin's economic gurus said yesterday that Russia would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol in its current form, a move that could torpedo the landmark UN treaty to reduce global warming.
"The Kyoto Protocol places significant limitations on the economic growth of Russia," said Mr Andrei Illarionov, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin and a well-known sceptic of a treaty that the United States has already rejected as flawed.
"Of course, in its current form, this protocol cannot be ratified," he said.
Mr Illarionov made his pronouncement after Mr Putin spoke to leading European industrialists in the Kremlin, and as delegates from 180 countries met in Milan to discuss prospects for an accord signed in 1997 in the Japanese city of Kyoto.
Mr Putin, after expressing some early enthusiasm for the pact, had cooled markedly since declaring his intent to double Russia's gross domestic product by 2010.
He appalled many environmentalists at a climate-change conference in Moscow in September, when he joked that global warming might not be a bad thing for a cold country like Russia, perhaps boosting harvests and saving people money on fur coats.
He said Russia wanted more time to check the economic implications of the treaty and study the science behind it, and that a final decision would be made in line with Russia's national interests.
After Washington pulled out of the pact, Russia's ratification became crucial to take the cumulative emissions of signatory states to at least 55 per cent of the world output of gases like carbon dioxide. Only then will the protocol come into force.
But Moscow has stalled on ratification, despite many analysts' assessments that it would make sound economic sense for Russia to sign up to a pact that calls for countries to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2012.
Industrial decline means Russian emissions are already a third below their 1990 mark. This would leave Moscow with spare emissions "credits" to sell to countries struggling to meet their own targets.
Russian officials have said Moscow wants concrete guarantees of revenue from emissions rights and investment in cleaner industry and power production. Mr Putin is also reported to be using Kyoto as a bargaining chip in protracted talks over Russian accession to the World Trade Organisation.
Environmentalists and UN officials played down Mr Illarionov's gripes yesterday.
"This is a senior adviser to the President, it is not a formal rejection like we saw with America," said Mr Michael Williams, a UN climate talks spokesman. "We remain optimistic that . . . Russia will ratify."