"I think it is desirable. I want to welcome it," the Japanese premier told reporters when asked about the Russian cabinet's decision to submit a bill to the lower house of the Federal Assembly for ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.

The Russian move on Thursday meant a key step that is likely to finally enable the 1997 treaty to enter into force despite its categorical rejection by the United States. Russia has been delaying its ratification of the pact.

Koizumi said he had been calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to ratify the pact when the two leaders met on various occasions.

But corporate Japan was concerned about the treaty's negative impact on the world second biggest economy, particularly Tokyo's commitment to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by six percent.

The pact requires industrialised countries -- with the exception of the US, which alone accounted for 36.1 percent of greenhouse emissions in 1990 -- to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases to below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

Japan must make a six-percent reduction in such emissions, which accounted for some 8.5 percent of the global total in 1990.

Japan's emissions of greenhouse gases in the year to March 2003 increased 2.2 percent from the previous year, with the amount growing 7.6 percent from fiscal 1990 levels, Kyodo News said.

"It is difficult to meet the obligation to reduce emissions by six percent," said Nobuo Yamaguchi, president of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

"It is feared (that it will) accelerate the hollowing-out of the country's economy and employment by promoting moves by companies to locate their activities overseas," he said.

Yuzo Ichikawa, executive director of the Japan Iron and Steel Federation, said: "It is questionable if the treaty, which commits only one third of the world's countries to obligations, will prove effective while the United States and China stay out of it."

Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren), renewed his concern that the ratification of the treaty could lead to imposition of so-called "environmental taxes" aimed at curbing emissions of pollutants including carbon dioxide.

He said that global warming "cannot be stopped without technological innovations".

"We should never resort to measures which will curtail the vitality of companies which are tasked with technological innovations," Okuda said.

The UN protocol, the first coordinated world response to tackling global warming, was drawn up as a "framework" agreement in Kyoto, western Japan, in 1997, but it took nearly four years to flesh out the deal with a book of rules and procedures.

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