Filed at 8:19 a.m. ET
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Earth Summit negotiators struggled
to end a dispute over women's rights on Tuesday to complete a
plan to slash poverty and safeguard the planet already
denounced by environmentalists as too bland.
But in a move likely to please greens, Russia told the
conference it expected to ratify the Kyoto pact on global
warming soon, which would virtually ensure its implementation.
After months of preparation and more than a week of
haggling, 10 words proposed by Canada in a bid to prevent
female circumcision and to safeguard abortion rights stood in
the way of a global deal on the penultimate day of the giant
conference.
Canada wanted to add: ``and in conformity with all human
rights and fundamental freedoms'' to a paragraph on
strengthening women's healthcare to try to prevent governments
from arguing that religious and cultural practices were
paramount.
``If it's not (included) the Johannesburg text will be a
very bad day for women,'' Mary Robinson, U.N. human rights
chief, said as dozens of world leaders made speeches at the
World Summit on Sustainable Development.
South Africa and the European Union back Canada in talks
likely to last until late on Tuesday. ``Women's rights are human
rights,'' Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said.
A group of women demonstrated in front of the conference
hall for the addition of the words to a sweeping blueprint for
halving poverty by 2015 by fighting AIDS, slowing global
warming and deforestation and bolstering fish stocks.
RUSSIA, CHINA BACK KYOTO
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said Moscow may
ratify the Kyoto Protocol on limiting global warming this year.
Russian ratification would, due a complex weighting system,
virtually ensure the treaty on reducing greenhouse gas
emissions would be implemented despite its rejection by the
biggest air polluter, the United States.
And China, the world's second biggest polluter, said it had
symbolically ratified the deal.
Although not bound by Kyoto because it is a developing
country, China's Premier Zhu Rongji told delegates at the
summit China had ratified the pact.
Ratification of Kyoto might appease environmentalists angry
over an energy deal that agreed to a ``substantial increase'' in
the use of renewable energy like solar and wind power, but
stopped short of setting any clear global targets.
BUSH ABSENT
President Bush is among the few world leaders not to attend
the summit of 21,000 delegates and will send Secretary of State
Colin Powell to make a speech on Wednesday, by which time most
world leaders will have left.
The action plan meant to crown the 10-day World Summit on
Sustainable Development has fallen far short of the ambitious
blueprint envisioned by many governments and green groups.
``End of term report -- Not satisfactory: must do better''
said environmental group Friends of the Earth.
Summit Secretary-General Nitin Desai defended the summit,
saying it had fixed targets from rescuing fish stocks to
halving the proportion of people who lack sanitation by 2015.
According to the U.N. 2002 Human Development Report, 1.1
billion people -- almost a fifth of humanity -- lacked access
to safe drinking water in 2000.
``We have an action plan and we have targets and
timetables,'' Desai told a news conference.
The biggest hurdle facing the accord on Tuesday was removed
when the EU dropped insistence on setting targets to boost the
use of renewable energy sources, like solar and wind power, in
a victory for the United States and OPEC oil-exporting states.
Despite condemnation from green groups, Desai said: ``I
would say this is the strongest mandate on energy that the
international system has received.''
Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, whose
country is the third-largest oil exporter in the world but also
a major producer of hydroelectricity, said: ``We are
disappointed that there are no targets.''
``The Americans, Saudis and Japanese have got what they
wanted...It's worse than we could have imagined,'' Steve Sawyer,
climate policy director of Greenpeace, told Reuters.
Environmentalists have also complained that the trade
section of the text failed to highlight the ecological and
social costs of globalization.
The question of how binding the final agreement is depends
on a political declaration that also needs to be hammered out.
South African papers splashed Zimbabwe's President Robert
Mugabe blasting British Prime Minister Tony Blair for meddling
in the former British colony's affairs, while clashes between
police and Palestinian protesters also featured widely.