Australian PM says French Kyoto tax silly

SYDNEY, Nov 15 (Reuters) Australian Prime Minister John Howard said a French proposal to introduce punitive taxes on imports from countries that refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocol, like Australia, was silly.

Howard refuses to sign Kyoto, which aims to cut greenhouse gases, arguing it is flawed because it does not include the world's biggest polluters, China, India and the United States.

He said French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's tax proposal on Monday was not a surprise coming from a nation that imposed high trade barriers.

''Well that is a thoroughly silly proposal and is totally out of touch with reality,'' Howard told a news conference yesterday.

''But mind you he does come from a country that has often imposed high trade barriers against other countries like Australia,'' he said.

Villepin said France would make concrete proposals about how such a tax might work in the first quarter of 2007.

Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper today ridiculed the French tax proposal, running a photograph of a mushroom cloud from a French nuclear test in the South Pacific in 1971, with a headline ''Back off, Frogs''.

Environmental issues are moving up both the French and Australian political agendas ahead of the 2007 presidential elections in France and national elections in Australia.

A Newspoll commissioned by environmental groups earlier this month found 79 per cent of voters want Howard to sign the Kyoto Protocol, while eight out of 10 Howard supporters want more government action on climate change.

Howard has recently shifted ground on climate change, conceding it exists, but refuses to do anything that would harm the country's coal industry, prefering to pursue new technologies that might produce cleaner fossil fuels.

Australia is the world's top coal exporter and is now pushing for a ''new Kyoto'' pact that would include the world's biggest polluters but would not carry mandatory targets like Kyoto.

Kyoto obliges about 40 developed nations to cut emissions by at least 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Australia negotiated a rise in emissions but later refused to ratify the protocol.

REUTERS PB PM1438