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Russia to push for specific agreements at UN climate meeting

NUSA DUA (Indonesia), December 13 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's delegation at an ongoing UN climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, is to push for the adoption of concrete commitments, the delegation's head said on Thursday.

Alexander Bedritsky, the president of the World Meteorological Organization and the head of the Russian Federal Hydrometeorology Service, said that the Russian delegation's aim was "to reduce global emissions to 50% of their 1990 levels by 2050."

The United Nations Climate Change Conference opened in Bali, Indonesia, on December 3 and is due to close on Friday. About 11,000 delegates from almost 200 countries, as well a range of international organizations, have taken part in the conference, which is aimed at the drawing up of a new international pact to combat global warming.

The Kyoto Protocol obliges the 35 industrial states that have ratified the document to cut emissions by 5% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Developed and developing countries have been locked in a dispute over who should bear the main burden for carbon emission restrictions.

The EU would like to see Bali's final text set out a non-binding goal of emission cuts of 25 to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 for industrial economies.

However, a skeptical Bedritsky commented that "a number of EU countries cannot even fulfill their current commitments."