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In a six-hour diatribe, Andrei Illarinov accused visiting Blair adviser Sir David King, the British government’s top scientist, of trying, through pressure from Blair’s office and through Foreign Se3cretary Jack Straw personally, to hijack a two-day conference on the global environmental treaty at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“During the past year [the British] have used bribes, blackmail and murder threats to put pressure on Russia, which shows how desperate their case is,” Illarinov said without elaborating. “This has not been in the realm of the press, but it had to come out after Sir David King’s behavior at the conference,” he said.

King filibustered the conference for four hours in an effort to block opponents of the protocol from presenting their findings, Illarinov said.

Illarinov, an outspoken and respected liberal economist, has often clashed with government officials on a variety of reform issues – including the Kyoto Protocol, which will die if Russia does not ratify it. It is not clear how mush sway Illarinov has with Putin , a fellow St. Petersburger.

Putin appeared to back the protocol earlier this year in exchange for the European Union supporting Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organization. But late Thursday, when asked by Japanese journalist whether his fierce opposition to Kyoto reflected the Kremlin’s position, Illarinov said Putin has never said he backs the treaty. “Putin didn’t say he supports the Kyoto Protocol, he said he supports the Kyoto process,” Illarinov said. He did not elaborate.

After signing a trade deal with the EU in May, Putin said Brussels has met Russia “halfway” on WTO, which “cannot but affect positively our position on the Kyoto Protocol.” But he also stressed that Russia “did not package the issues of WTO and the Kyoto Protocol.”

“I cannot say how things will be 100 percent, because ratification is not an issue for the president but for the parliament,” Putin said at the time.

Illarinov accused Britain and other “imperialist” rich nations of using Kyoto to keep poor nations from developing. The united States backed out of Kyoto n 2001.

Britain denied the charge.

“Global warming is an issue of concern for all citizens of the world and we need to tackle it,” British Embassy spokesman Richard Turner said.

Peter Cox, head of the British Meteorological Office’s climate, chemistry and ecosystems department, said last week’s conference was a publicity stunt by Illarinov, who brought in well-known skeptics to discredit the findings of the International Panel on Climate Control, the basis for Kyoto, Cox said.

“The meeting was set up to challenge the IPCC line,” he said. “Illarinov hijacked the meeting by inviting people who were outside the IPCC process and who were bitter about that.”

Cox said the conference was “Like no other” he had even attended and said he felt very sorry for the Russian scientists that were used as a “rubber stamp for Illarinov’s agenda.”

The academy issued a statement after the conference saying that it found “no scientific basis” for Kyoto Protocol, and that a warmer Earth is actually positive for Russia.

The stated aim of the 1997 protocol is to roll back global carbon dioxide emissions – which many scientists say cause global warning – to 1990 levels.

Many poor countries have argued that the agreement puts a disproportionate amount of pressure on their carbon dioxide-intensive, manufacturing-based economies. Illarinov, however, has also opted to attack the very scientific principles on which IPCC on which IPCC bases its argument for implementing the treaty.

Illarinov argued that the real reason every rich nation but America, the world’s biggest polluter, backs the protocol is because they want control of emissions quotas, something he said will give developed nations unprecedented control of poor countries’ economies.

“Europe has seen the effects of the national-socialist ideology and the Marxist ideology. The imperialist philosophy behind Kyoto is nothing short of these in its scale,” he said.

“This is war. But our cause is just and we will prevail.”

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