Row clouds last day of Kyoto climate talks
Friday, December 12, 2003
MILAN, Italy (Reuters) -- A dispute over aid to OPEC states clouded the last day of a U.N. conference on global warming on Friday with the Kyoto protocol hanging by a thread amid uncertainties over Russian ratification.
Kyoto backers reaffirmed their support for the 1997 pact despite scant progress at the 12-day Milan talks on ways to fight rising temperatures blamed for more droughts, storms and for melting glaciers that may raise sea levels.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, whose country holds the key to whether Kyoto enters into force, told Japanese media in an interview published on Friday that Moscow was preparing a "special action plan" to ratify it but gave no deadline for signing the pact.
Kyoto aims to cut rich countries' emissions of carbon dioxide by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
Those in favor of Kyoto at the 180-nation talks welcomed his remarks, which follow a string of apparently contradictory statements from Moscow about the deal to rein in emissions from factories, cars and power plants blamed for global warming.
"The Kyoto protocol is the only game in town," German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin told a news conference, expressing confidence that Russia would ratify. The United States has called Kyoto fatally flawed and pulled out in 2001.
Delegates said that Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, wanted promises of aid if Kyoto spurs a shift to renewable energies like tidal, solar or wind energy at the expense of fossil fuels.
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