Russian Cabinet OK's Kyoto Pact

UN emissions protocol gains key backing 

ANNA DOLGOV / Boston Globe 1oct04

[Text of the Kyoto Protocol at UN]

MOSCOW — Russia's Cabinet approved the worldwide Kyoto Protocol on global warming yesterday, clearing the way for implementation of the long-delayed United Nations pact.

The 1997 agreement on limiting industrial emissions would go into effect after parliament ratifies it and President Vladimir Putin signs it. The legislature, like the Cabinet, is dominated by Putin's loyalists and is expected to obey presidential directives.

Russia has held the decisive vote on the agreement since the United States withdrew from the pact in 2001, arguing that the treaty puts a burden on the US economy and favors developing nations.

The Cabinet signed off on the protocol, which was drafted in Kyoto, Japan, amid pressure from the European Union. Putin's key economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, had played up the sacrifices Russia would make under the pact, calling it an ''economic Auschwitz" that would put a ceiling on the country's industrial development and destroy the Kremlin's plans to double Russia's gross domestic product by 2010.

Yesterday, Illarionov told the Cabinet that approval of the pact was ''a political decision, a forced decision," Russian news agencies reported.

The EU and the United Nations welcomed the Russian approval.

''This news today that the government of Russia has endorsed the protocol and will present it to the Duma, the Russian parliament, is cause for celebration," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN Environment Program.

Environmental activists applauded Putin. ''As the Earth is battered by increasing storms, floods and droughts, President Putin has brought us to a pivotal point in human history," said Steve Sawyer of Greenpeace International.

''The Bush administration is out in the cold and the rest of the world can move forward as one to start tackling climate change," Sawyer said in a statement.

To come into force, the Kyoto agreement must be approved by nations responsible for 55 percent of gas emissions in 1990. Ratification by Russia, which produces 17 percent of world emissions, would put the figure past that threshold. The United States accounts for 35 percent of world emissions.

Under the pact, which would take effect 90 days after Russian ratification, industrialized countries are supposed to cut their collective emissions of six key gases to 5.2 percent below the 1990 level by 2012.

Analysts saw the Cabinet move as an attempt to bolster Russia's international image amid criticism of the Kremlin's sweeping plans to tighten central control. Russia also may be trying to secure European support for a UN resolution aimed at reversing US and British decisions to grant political asylum to Chechen separatists.

''It is clear that Russia is trying to make a bargain with the Europeans," said Ksenia Yudayeva, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center.

In approving the pact, the government also may also be sending a strong statement to the Bush administration for its criticism of Putin's move to centralize power in Russia after a hostage-taking raid in the town of Beslan, said Alexander Pikayev, an independent political analyst in Moscow.

''Many in the Kremlin were very displeased with the US reaction to the aftermath of Beslan events," he said.

An attempt to demonstrate opposition to the United States by ratifying the Kyoto agreement would be in line with angry rhetoric by Russian officials, who have rejected US criticism of Putin's reforms as attempts to influence Russia's internal affairs. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said Moscow regards the criticism as a ''strange" attempt to ''push through the thought that democracy should have only one form."

Russian media and observers have warned that US-Russian relations may worsen. ''A whiff of Cold War is in the air," the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta said in a recent front-page headline.

A senior US diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity said that Russia's ''rhetoric has been unfortunate because it has fed certain anti-Western and anti-American feelings at a time when we need each other more."

Putin promised quick ratification of the Kyoto Protocol after reaching a deal with the European Union in May to ease Russia's admission to the World Trade Organization, but took no further action for months. The delays have led many analysts to suggest that the Kremlin was waiting for a favorable moment to use the pact as a bargaining tool with European leaders.

Moscow played the Kyoto card after several European politicians and US senators accused Putin of shifting toward a dictatorship by moving to abolish popular elections of governors and independent lawmakers — changes Putin describes as antiterrorism measures.

Following the raid, Russia has also asked the UN to expand its list of international terrorists to include Chechen rebels and to demand their ''expedited extradition." Moscow, which has been particularly displeased by a US ruling to grant political asylum to a former minister in Chechnya's separatist government of the late 1990s, and a British decision to do the same for a senior separatist envoy, has sought European backing for its draft UN resolution.

Material from wire services was included in this report.

source: http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2004/10/01/russian_cabinet_oks_kyoto_pact?mode=PF 6oct04