Blair: Kyoto goals not enough

Blair: "In truth Kyoto is not radical enough"

MAPUTO, Mozambique (Reuters) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair called on Sunday for more ambitious goals to curb climate change, saying sceptics like the United States could be won over by a global drive to develop clean fuel technology.

Trying to bridge one of the bitterest disputes at the Earth Summit in South Africa, Blair said harnessing clean energy sources held the key to ensuring economic growth without threatening the planet.

He told a gathering of politicians and businessmen in Mozambique that world leaders needed to set goals beyond the Kyoto protocol on climate change set five years ago -- which the United States has refused to ratify.

"In truth Kyoto is not radical enough," he said. "Yet it is at present the most that is do-able and even then the largest nation, the United States, stands outside it."

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"They believe the targets are unachievable without unacceptable economic consequences."

Blair will address the Earth Summit on Monday. His close but absent ally, U.S. President George W. Bush, faces fierce criticism from environmentalists who say he is obstructing progress on the environment and sustainable development.

The British premier said that, to address U.S. fears, better use of science, technology and market incentives were needed to win support for Kyoto "and the necessary, more radical, action on climate change."

Calling for greater political will to tackle the problem, Blair promised to put forward specific British proposals after consulting with G8 allies.

"We need a systematic attempt to work out the potential of the most exciting scientific work now being done, for example in the areas of fuel cell technology, offshore wind and tidal energy, and converting waste to create methane," he said.

"Kyoto is right, but it is not enough."

Blair's own green adviser has criticised his domestic record, saying that in five years under Blair environmental progress has been too timid and describing his Labour government as intoxicated with big business.

But Blair said he was proud of his record and defended the role of business in promoting growth and development.

"We can't solve climate change by being anti-business or anti-success," he said.

He also repeated British calls for an opening up of U.S. markets and reform of EU farm subsidies, which developing countries say block their agricultural exports to Europe.

"Free trade is vital and neither the EU, the U.S., Japan nor any other wealthy nation should be retreating from it," he said.

Blair was due to fly from Mozambique on Monday to join leaders from around 100 countries at the Johannesburg summit.

Environmental groups said he would set out proposals aimed at preventing the mismanagement of revenues paid to developing countries by oil, gas and mining companies through open accounting of all payments to governments.

Publish What You Pay, a coalition of more than 60 non- governmental organisations, said it "warmly welcomes the announcement and Mr Blair's leadership on the issue."

But it said regulation rather than a voluntary framework was needed.

The groups said oil, gas and mining industries were important to more than 50 developing countries that were home to 3.5 billion people. More than 1.5 billion of those people lived on less than $2 a day.

But often the oil firms paid money to institutions which were unaccountable to their citizens and became "a vehicle for embezzlement, fraud and corruption," they said.