JURIST - Paper Chase: UN official hopeful Russia will ratify Kyoto Protocol

In international law news Thursday, continuing a story previously reported in JURIST's Paper Chase, Miklos Persanyi, president of the ongoing UN climate conference, said today that "the real position of Russia at this conference is that Russia signed the Kyoto Protocol, and the Russian prime minister promised a year ago to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This is the Russian position according to international law." However, Andrei Illarionov, an economic advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, reaffirmed that his remarks made earlier this week indicating that Russia would not sign the Protocol in its present form indeed reflected the President's position. AP has more. In a related story, the AFP reports that even if the Protocol is ultimately rejected, it has already had a positive impact on global warming by changing practices on greenhouse gas emissions. In the years since the Protocol was negotiated, several countries and the EU have passed new legislation and companies have modified their practices in order to comply with the Protocol.... France's foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, has said that the EU is considering taking the issue of Israel's security wall to the International Court of Justice. De Villepin said that "the European countries are discussing the issue [of the wall] along with the possibility to launch a new European peace initiative under the auspices of United Nations. However, they are examining the way to do that." The Palestinian Authority and several other Arab states have also decided to lodge a complaint with the ICJ over the Israeli wall. Read the full story from the Palestine Chronicle.

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