Harpers Claims Climate Meeting Never Scheduled - EU, Finns Disagree

[hatrack]

OTTAWA - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has ruffled some European feathers by putting off a bilateral summit with the European Union that was just weeks away. Critics at home said the Conservative prime minister was simply trying to avoid European pressure to respect Ottawa's commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, which Harper says Canada will not be able to meet. "It's very bad international relations strategy by the prime minister," Jack Layton, head of the leftist New Democratic Party (NDP), told Reuters.

Harper's office denied the decision had anything to do with Kyoto and everything to do with his desire, as the head of a minority government, to spend as much time in Ottawa as possible. "He's committed to governing the country," Harper spokeswoman Carolyn Stewart-Olsen said. "It's all about the day-to-day aspects of governing the country."

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen of Finland, which holds the rotating EU presidency, called Harper on Friday to inquire about rumors that Canada might not go ahead with plans for the Canada-EU meeting on Nov. 27 in Tampere, Finland. Harper asked that the meeting be pushed back to 2007.

Beyond that, the two sides offered sharply differing versions on what had been planned. "There was no definite plan to have a summit," Stewart-Olsen told Reuters, adding that the prime minister's office had never seen an agenda for the trip. However, on the Finnish EU Presidency's Web site, a news release on Oct. 13 refers to the summit being fixed for Nov. 27. "It was definitely fixed, that is very clear," said Finland's ambassador to Ottawa, Pasi Patokallio.

EDIT

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/38845/story.htm