"It's vital, we think, to continue negotiations" to resolve the grievance, said Russian delegation chief Alexander Bedritsky, warning that the outcome of this would determine whether Russia would ratify the accord.

US abandonment of Kyoto in 2001 means that, under the pact's ratification arithmetic, approval by the Russian parliament is now essential for it to take effect.

In recent months, Moscow has been sending ambiguous signals about when or even whether it intends to ratify as promised, hinting that it hoped to wring further concessions from the European Union (EU), Kyoto's champion.

Thursday's pronouncement, made at a forum of Kyoto's signatories, was the bluntest and most detailed expose of Russia's demands.

In a brief speech to a conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate change (UNFCCC) -- Kyoto's parent treaty -- Bedritsky said Russia's objections centered on a mechanism in the Protocol called Joint Implementation.

This is the term for investment projects made by industrialised countries in other industrialised countries that help signatories reach Kyoto's target of cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, the pollution blamed for global warming.

Russia's industries opposed "attempts" to "attach legal sanctions and fines in the business contracts" under Joint Implementation, according to an official interpreter's translation of Bedritsky's speech.

"This has considerably altered the circumstances associated with our participation in the Kyoto Protocol as things stand today. It's vital, we think, to continue negotiations to try to find solutions that are more acceptable to countries that have accepted to cut their GHG [greenhouse-gas] emissions."

Bedritsky also called for an effort to spell out how Joint Implementation would work in practice, and said without elaborating "it's also necessary to begin working on considerably simplifying the procedures associated with Kyoto."

He warned: "We wish to resolve a solution that is just and it is on the basis of that principle that the Kyoto process in Russia will be assessed and [also] the assessment of the prospects for ratification."

The deal on Joint Implementation was part of an overall agreement on Kyoto's notoriously complex rulebook.

That accord took four years of laborious negotiations to complete, leaving relatively minor technical aspects to be hammered out.

SPACE.WIRE