Climate conference is mostly about money, not climate - Kosachyov.

MOSCOW, December 19 (Itar-Tass) -- The on-going United Nations
conference on climate change in Copenhagen is revolving not so much about
climate as about money, the chairman of the State Duma's international
affairs committee, Konstantin Kosachyov, said about the ongoing debate
over the global warming problem.

"The point is that for the past one hundred years or so, when nobody
cared about ecology, a group of states - states that are now called
industrialized ones - impudently took advantage of the lack of attention
to environmental affairs to exploit nature, and to launch and expand
industrial production without adequate investments into cleaning
facilities and the corresponding technologies. From all this they derived
profits," Kosachyov said on the round-the-clock news channel Vesti on
Friday.
Now these countries enjoy the status of industrialized ones and they
invite the whole world to enter into a new phase of humanity's development
by spending extra funds on ecological programs, on climate protection and
on cleaning facilities, Kosachyov said.
"Now we are asked to assume some unilateral, voluntary restrictions in
the ecological sphere, to invest into the very same cleaning facilities.
This measure is a rather discriminatory one," the legislator said. "This
is especially true of the countries that are in the first phase of their
industrial development. These costs for them are utterly unbearable."

.Duma may ratify ECHR protocol by yearend - Krasheninnikov.

MOSCOW, December 19 (Itar-Tass) - Russia's State Duma will most
probably ratify Protocol 14 to the European Convention of Human Rights on
the reform of the Strasbourg Court when it meets in this year's last
full-scale session on December 25, the chief of the committee on civil,
criminal, arbitrary and procedural legislation, Pavel Krasheninnikov, told
Itar-Tass on Friday.
He said that in compliance with instructions from Duma Speaker Boris
Gryzlov the committee would consider Protocol 14 on Tuesday and issue a
positive recommendation.
"Most of the committee's members support the document and want it to
be ratified. This stems from our obligations to the Council of Europe. We
plan to recommend to take this issue off the table before the year is
out," Krasheninnikov said.
The document in question paves the way for a reform of the European
Court of Human Rights. It extends the term of office of ECHR judges from
six years to nine. Also, it will allow the court to reject complaints as
unacceptable depending on the damage requested by the plaintiff, to
pronounce verdicts based on precedent, to empower each single judge to
turn down obviously unacceptable lawsuits, and to let panels of three
judges, and not the whole court, to make decisions on the merits.
Moreover, the presence of a judge from the country involved in the case in
the decision-making troika is not mandatory.
Strasbourg argues that the new structure and rules of procedure will
make it possible to sort out piles of unprocessed grievances.
Russia put its signature to the protocol but at the end of 2006 the
State Duma refused to ratify it. Russian lawmakers said the provisions of
the document contradicted Russia's interests, and the concept of the
modernization of the national judicial system. In particular, Russian
legislators objected to the abolition of the principle of collective
decision-making in considering cases.
Russia is the sole of the 47 CE member-countries that has not ratified
protocol Protocol 14 to this day, which does not allow for beginning the
reform of the ECHR.
However, on Thursday Russian President Dmitry Medvedev instructed the
State Duma to consider the document again. State Duma Speaker Boris
Gryzlov declared he had asked the committee concerned to present its
proposals to the Duma Council.
He explained that "on December 14, the Council of Europe's Committee
of Ministers made a number of procedural decisions which allow for
amending a number of provisions of Protocol 14.
"There was a consensus that the committee of three judges, which will
discuss the issues concerning Russia, will include a Russian
representative. In addition, all of the issues concerning Russia, which
the Strasbourg court will review, will be settled with the participation
of Russian representatives. Therefore, we see that that the national
judicial system in this situation enjoys priority," he said.

-0-str