Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday Russia was ready to sign a new legally binding climate treaty.
Delegations from 193 countries have been negotiating at the UN Climate Change Conference since December 7, but observers say the countries have made little progress in reaching any meaningful deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
"Russia is ready to take part in preparing a legally binding agreement and ready to document its obligations to cut emissions," the Russian president said.
He added that Russia would continue to decrease harmful emissions even if the new international climate deal is not signed, because "this would work to our benefit."
The Russian leader said the country had become the global leader in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for almost half of all emission cuts in the past 20 years, and its efforts "considerably compensated for the growth of harmful emissions, registered in other states."
He called on the participants of the climate summit to agree in principle on the new post-Kyoto deal, required to further cut carbon emissions after the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. The United States has not ratified the treaty, and although China and India have joined, they are not obliged by the protocol to reduce their emissions.
"By the expiry of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, that is to say, by 2012, we would need a more complete and efficient mechanism - a viable legal document to institutionalize issues of international cooperation," Medvedev said.
"Above all, it should be all-encompassing and based on the principles of justice and universal accountability," the Russian president said, adding that the accountability should be "differentiated depending on the country's development level."
COPENHAGEN, December 18 (RIA Novosti)
