Japan renews vow to reach Kyoto emissions targets

TOKYO, May 30 (Reuters) Japan vowed today to meet its Kyoto Protocol targets on cutting emissions, and said it was qualified to lead international efforts to curb global warming, a day after clashing with the EU over a post-Kyoto initiative.

Climate change will be at the top of the agenda at a meeting of G8 leaders of industrialised nations in Germany next month.

''We have no hesitation in saying Japan will achieve what we have committed. In the past it has always been true,'' Koji Tsuruoka, the foreign ministry director-general for global issues, told reporters in Tokyo.

Japan is committed under the Kyoto Protocol to cutting emissions of greenhouse gases by 6 per cent from 1990 levels, but its emissions have in fact risen by 8 per cent - leaving a 14 per cent gap to be covered.

''We believe it is unfortunate that the Canadian government has decided to abandon achieving the target that they had agreed on under the Kyoto Protocol,'' Tsuruoka said. ''We are not even dreaming of doing that.'' He said Japan would produce another national plan by the end of the year to meet its targets and denied Japan's weak track record so far meant it was ill qualified to lead global efforts on climate change.

''This is not something that we are doing for the first time. We have the Kyoto experience,'' he said. ''If we are to do this again, why don't we take lessons from Kyoto?'' RIVAL INITIATIVES Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last week proposed a global target to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and said Japan would support developing countries commited to cutting emissions with a new form of financial aid.

Tokyo wants to raise the initiative, which has been criticised as vague, at the G8 summit.

EU efforts to speed action on climate change took a blow on Tuesday when Japan refused to follow the EU line on how to establish a new international regime once the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

A statement from EU president Germany, which chaired a gathering of EU and Asian foreign ministers in Hamburg ahead of the G8 summit, said talks to establish a new regime should be completed by 2009.

But Japan said it could not accept a 2009 target, saying big polluters such as the United States, China and India should be included before any such target was set.

Tsuruoka said Tokyo did not agree with the EU approach.

The EU has already pledged to cut its own emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

''That's very respectable and we have absolutely no objection to that,'' he said. ''But we are asking the question: has that decision produced any additional country coming on board?'' ''Unfortunately, we have not seen one country that has said 'we will do X because the EU has done Y','' Tsuruoka said.

It was important to involve the whole world, especially major emitters such as China and India, in decision-making, rather than risking alienating them by setting targets without their involvement, he said.

REUTERS GL VV1722