United Nations condemns attempted coup in Libya

Plotters proclaim return of a former administration after armed units seize buildings of UN-backed GNA

Forces loyal to Libya’s UN-backed GNA during their operation to clear Isis from the city. Photograph: Xinhua/Barcroft Images

Chris Stephen in Tunis-Saturday 15 October 2016

The United Nations has condemned an attempted coup in Libya that has seen a rival administration capture key government buildings, as both rebels and officials scrambled to win the support of Tripoli’s powerful militias.

The UN envoy Martin Kobler said: “I condemn the attempt to seize the headquarters of the high council of state. Such actions … will generate further disorder and insecurity and must end for the sake of the Libyan people.”

His comments came hours after armed units backed by trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns seized buildings of the UN-backed government of national accord around Tripoli’s Rixos hotel complex, with local forces fleeing without a battle.

Fayez al-Sarraj, the GNA’s prime minister, and his seven-strong presidency council have spent the past week ensconced in a hotel in neighbouring Tunisia debating a new cabinet, after deciding the Libyan capital was unsafe.

The plotters have proclaimed the return of a former administration, the national salvation government, in what has so far been a bloodless takeover. Coup leader Khalifa al-Ghwell, a former prime minister, declared the GNA was now void after repeated failures. “The presidential council was given chances one after another to form the government, but it fails ... and has become an illegal executive authority,” he said.

Speaking from Tunisia, Sarraj vowed to restore order, calling on loyal militia units to “arrest the plotters immediately”. He said: “Arrest all those who plotted for the coup and those who are [looking at] forming parallel governments. This action by the GNC and the armed militias that backed its coup attempt helps add to the chaos in the country and leaves the door wide open for any group to assault the state institutions and buildings.”

Six months after arriving in Tripoli, the GNA has failed to establish a security force of its own, and with no police or army units in the capital, the city’s potent militias have emerged as kingmakers in the power struggle between rival governments. The struggle is itself part of a wider war, between militias in parts of the capital and western Libya against those loyal to the elected parliament based in the eastern town of Tobruk.

Parliament has so far refused to work with the GNA, and its hand was strengthened in September after its army commander, Khalifa Haftar, captured the country’s key oil ports giving it control of most of the oil industry.

Fayez al-Sarraj, the GNA’s prime minister. Photograph: Aurelien Morissard/IP3/Getty Images

MPs are due to meet in Tobruk on Monday to debate events in Tripoli, but MP Salah Suhbi said they were likely to adopt a wait-and-see attitude towards the capital’s power struggle. “To be honest it is chaotic, we now have two governments [in Tripoli] – it is out of our hands,” he said. “The situation in Tripoli is getting out of control: it is a city with 150 militias in it.”

Diplomats had been pinning their hopes on the GNA being able to persuade the country’s splintered armed factions to unify behind it and end a two-year civil war, tackle Islamic State and end a rising tide of migration to Europe. Instead, the fledgling government has presided over a capital where militia violence and assassinations are rife, and citizens struggle with daily power cuts – one was in place when the coup broke out – cash shortages and rampant inflation.

Kidnappings, either for money or part of ongoing tit-for-tat militia wars, are endemic, prompting Britain’s Libya ambassador, Peter Millett, stationed for security reasons in neighbouring Tunisia, to call on the government to do more.

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More kidnappings & killings in #Tripoli & across #Libya. Legitimate authorities improve security & tackle impunityhttps://www.libyaherald.com/2016/10/10/assasination-attempt-on-tripoli-civil-registry-authority-acting-head/ …

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Diplomatic sources have ruled out the deployment of foreign troops to back the government, although Britain and Italy earlier this year considered deploying 5,000 soldiers to train a new GNA army. But that new army has yet to be formed, with the government struggling to win popular support.

Instead, Tripoli’s militias hold the key to power. Sarraj will hope two key militias who have so far backed the GNA remain loyal: Rada, a quasi-police force in Tripoli; and those from Misrata, whose brigades are already heavily engaged in a war of attrition – backed by US airstrikes – against Isis in Sirte.

A European Union External Action spokesman said on Saturday: “The use of force to seize power in Libya can only lead to further disorder and a spiral of violence where the Libyan people would be the main victims.”

Some Tripoli citizens, with phone services disrupted by power cuts and computers powered by car batteries, tweeted their surprise that the coup had yet to trigger wider violence.

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Woke up to a capital with 2 opposing resident govs. Everything is surprisingly ordinary...right down 2 the power cut. #Tripoli#Libya

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Lessons from an Underground City

It is easy enough for us to look back on history and wonder why people ever believed that the sun revolved around our planet, ships would fall off the edge of the earth, or raw human sewage dumped into the streets would spread killer diseases.

by John Perkins

( October 14, 2016, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) “Three families lived in this tiny space. On average, about 14 people.” Robert, our Edinburgh guide, spread his arms around a room that was approximately the size of the interior of a school bus. We were in the underground city, a portion of Scotland’s capital that had been buried for many years – and now lay vacant among the foundations of newer buildings.

Robert walked to the far end of the room and aimed his flashlight at a small lamp on a crude wooden stool. “The only fuels available in the 1600s were fish oil and animal fat. You can imagine how burning them made this room smell! But, even worse: these people bathed only once or twice a year.”

He took a couple of steps to the corner of the room and pointed his light at a wooden bucket. “To make matters worse, this served as the sole toilet for all those people. Can you imagine how that smelled?”

Without waiting for an answer he walked to the open doorway that led to the narrow “close,” the term used to describe the narrow steeply-sloping streets that characterized this historic community. “Twice a day the city bells rang and the youngest child who was strong enough to carry a bucket from each house went to the doorway and threw the contents out into the street.” He pointed up. “This house is on the bottom floor. Above it were five more stories, each with houses. All of them threw the contents of their buckets down into this same street.”

Robert stepped back into our tiny room and described the terrible diseases, including smallpox and the Black Plague, that infected the thousands of people who lived in Edinburgh in those days. “During the plague epidemic of 1645,” he said. “ten thousand citizens, a third of the population, died in less than six months.”

I left this underground city which officially is known as Mary King’s Close (named after an unusually successful businesswoman of the 1600s), walked out into bright sunshine, and sat down on a bench to watch the people of modern Edinburgh mingle with tourists. As I sat there, I kept hearing the words of one of the men in our group.

“How could they have been so stupid as to throw their feces into the streets?”

And the response of his wife who stood next to him in that tiny room. “They knew nothing about germs, honey. They had no idea human pollution spread disease.”

Human pollution. My thoughts immediately went to a newspaper editorial I had read that morning about Matthew, the hurricane that had just devastated Haiti. The author lamented the deaths of hundreds of people in a country without adequate warning systems. She also speculated about the causes of so many recent destructive acts of nature: hurricanes, floods, droughts, tornadoes, earthquakes, and the various other impacts of climate change. She ended by asking when human beings would become intelligent enough to understand that we cannot continue “defecating” into our earth, air, and water. I was struck by the fact that she used that word. Defecating.

It is easy enough for us to look back on history and wonder why people ever believed that the sun revolved around our planet, ships would fall off the edge of the earth, or raw human sewage dumped into the streets would spread killer diseases.

As I rested on that bench and watched people walk by on this street of what is one of the most fascinating and beautiful sections of any city I’ve ever visited, I couldn’t help wondering what a great grandson or granddaughter of mine sitting in this same spot – assuming that it exists when he or she is my age – will think about us.

Will future generations not marvel at our stupidity?

And then of course the follow-on question: Aren’t we intelligent enough to make sure they will not need to ask?

Let’s make certain that the answer to this question is a resounding YES.

Yes, we are intelligent enough to change.

Yes, we will listen to our hearts and minds, our intuition and our science.

Yes, we understand that we must stop defecating into our earth, water, and air. Stop all the pollution and the ravaging of resources. Cease relying on violence – to the earth, plants, animals, and other people. Stop killing each other.

It is time to stop blaming “them” and admit that it is up to “us” to turn failing systems into successful ones. It is time that we listened to the voices that come from unground cities everywhere, to the voices of our ancestors who warn us against trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s tools, who urge us – command us – to rise to a consciousness that will provide a world that future generations of all species will want to inherit. Yes, to no longer throwing our human pollution into the streets of life.

---

About John Perkins : John is a founder and board member of Dream Change & The Pachamama Alliance, non-profit organizations devoted to establishing a world future generations will want to inherit & the author of the NY Times bestseller, Confessions Of An Economic Hitman.

Nicola Sturgeon: border checks ‘lack all credibility’

Nicola Sturgeon: border checks ‘lack all credibility’

Gary Gibbon on Politics-Friday 14 Oct 2016

Nicola Sturgeon feels that Theresa May has gifted her a priceless argument for the second Scottish independence referendum whenever it comes.

Every time the UK government talks of maintaining excellent trade with Ireland, a separate nation and an EU member,  she says it’s removing all credibility for the claim that an independent Scotland could be harming Scotland’s trade with the rest of the UK.

SNP figures are also closely watching the discussions between London and Dublin on how to stop a hard border happening between Northern Ireland and Ireland, saying they provide a template for an invisible border between an independent Scotland and  England. In London, ministers say that the SNP’s hopes for a relaxed immigration policy (on display again in the conference chamber today) would mean there couldn’t be an open border.

Nicola Sturgeon said today in an interview with Channel 4 News that any suggestion that there would need to be border checks between England and Scotland if Scotland opted for independence and went back into the EU “lack all credibility”.

Scotland’s First Minister said trust hadn’t broken down between her and Theresa May but “it has yet to be properly established”.

The SNP leader, who addresses her conference in Glasgow tomorrow, said those in the British Government who accused her of bluster in threatening an independence referendum were “very daft”. “This is not a game of chicken,” she said.

I asked if she had received any private assurances from EU leaders normally hostile to breakaway nations being given EU membership that an independent Scotland would get back into the EU club if it had fallen out of the EU as part of Brexit. Mrs Sturgeon said “I haven’t gone looking for them” but acknowledged those sort of questions would have to be asked further down the track.

Scotland’s First Minister said talk of Scotland’s deficit, currently at 15 per cent, being comparable with Greece’s was “quite outrageous”. She said “I don’t think people realise how deeply offensive it is” to compare Scotland with Greece and suggested that her political opponents would pay a price with public support if they keep making comparisons like that.

Global rights group raises skepticism over Philippine panel to probe media killings

15th October 2016 

THE Human Rights Watch (HRW) has expressed doubt that the panel formed this week by the Philippine government to look into the string of unsolved murders of Filipino journalists would carry out an impartial probe into the cases.

In a statement, the international rights group’s Asia division deputy director Phelim Kine noted that the panel is being established at a time when the Southeast Asian nation is in the spotlight for the thousands of extrajudicial killings that have occurred under President Rodrigo Duterte’s watch.

“The government has consistently refused to investigate the circumstances of those deaths, which include an estimated 1,323 killings by police of suspected ‘drug pushers and users’ as well as 1,067 killings linked to ‘unidentified gunmen’ between July 1 and Sept 30.

“Instead, Duterte has praised the killings as proof of the ‘success’ of the anti-drug campaign and urged police to ‘seize the momentum’,” Kine said.

SEE ALSO: Duterte says ‘happy to slaughter’ millions of drug addicts like Hitler killed Jews

However, the rights advocate said the formation of the panel, dubbed the “Presidential Task Force on Violations of the Right to Life, Liberty and Security of the Members of the Media”, is a step in the right direction for the Philippines.

He said an investigation into the unsolved murders of Filipino journalists is sorely needed, especially as data shows that of the 172 cases filed in court so far, only 14 cases have ended in convictions.

Journalists and journalism students light candles in honor of at least 18 massacred journalists during a rally in 2009 at Manila’s Quezon city in the Philippines. Pic: AP.

Kine noted that Duterte’s predecessor, Benigno Aquino III had vowed to put a stop to the killings and to prosecute the culprits. Despite this pledge, at least 30 journalists were killed while he was in office between 2010 and 2016. During the same period, police have recorded only one successful prosecution.

“But,” he added, “journalists have reason to be skeptical about the integrity of a Duterte government inquiry.

“Not just because Duterte has himself justified the ‘assassination” of journalists he deems ‘corrupt’, but also because the government has been cheerleading killings without consequence in its so-called ‘war on drugs’,” Kine said.

SEE ALSO: International court warns Philippines: Mastermind of drug killings can be prosecuted

He also raised questions over the composition of the new task force, noting that it will be led by Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II, who he noted has in the past defended the president’s crackdown on the narcotics trade.

Aguirre has also issued remarks to justify Duterte’s methods, saying: “Desperate times call for desperate measures. So this is what the president is doing and we support it.”

“The Philippines’ growing ranks of victims of extrajudicial killings deserve justice. But unless official attitudes shift 180 degrees, there’s no reason to believe the Duterte government will provide it anytime soon,” Kine said.

SEE ALSO: Philippines defends Duterte after he is labelled ‘serial killer’, ‘psychopath’

According to Rappler, Duterte signed an administrative order to create the task force on Thursday. The task force is given the duty of “ensuring a safe environment for media workers”, the report said, quoting Communications Secretary Martin Andanar, who will be co-chairing the panel with Aguirre.

It said the order signed by Duterte recognizes that the Philippines is deemed among the most dangerous places in the world for journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based watchdog, ranked the Philippines the fourth worst country in the world in 2015 in terms of unsolved killings, Rappler noted. The watchdog also estimates that between 1992 and 2016, a total of 133 journalists and media workers were murdered, 77 cases with confirmed motives, two of media workers and 54 with motives unconfirmed.

The Education of Mikheil Saakashvili

The governor of Ukraine’s bucolic Odessa region wanted to take on the corrupt system. Now he’s realized he has to work with it.

BY IAN BATESON-OCTOBER 14, 2016

Just last week, former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili was confidently predicting his imminent return to his home country. Anticipating that his old political party would triumph in the Oct. 8 parliamentary elections — and that corruption charges the current government instigated against him would be dropped — he seemed all but to have packed his bags. Instead, his party suffered a major defeat. It looks like, at least for now, he will remain where he is — as governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region. But governing Odessa isn’t what he once hoped it would be.

When Saakashvili called a press conference one day this August, no one could have guessed who would be standing next to him. For months, he had lambasted Odessa’s mayor, Gennady Trukhanov, as a corrupt mafioso who was draining the city dry. But suddenly, the hulking governor and the lean, Thai-boxing Trukhanov were standing shoulder-to-shoulder as if nothing had happened.

For Saakashvili, the event was part pragmatic politics and part admission of defeat. He had called the press conference to show Ukraine’s leaders that the region’s two leading politicians could work together, and that Odessa deserved to host the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest. But it was also an acknowledgement that, after more than fifteen months as governor, he is unable to enact any major projects without Mayor Trukhanov, who has his roots in the criminality that ravaged Odessa in the ‘90s. In that way, Saakashvili’s troubles in Odessa represent the painful compromises of trying to advance reform in a country where some things have changed — but where most of the old system’s apparatchiks haven’t really gone anywhere.

When Saakashvili was first appointed governor in May 2015, the Odessa region, which hugs the coast of the Black Sea, appeared to be a leading front in Ukraine’s war on corruption. Saakashvili brought an international media spotlight and new team of young reformers. Locals hoped that he would soon begin enacting the decisive reforms that had made him famous in his native Georgia (and that their own leaders had been unable to deliver). But more than a year later, Saakashvili has few accomplishments to boast of. His time in Odessa has been a humbling experience for the young and tremendously energetic former Georgian president.

Saakashvili had come to Ukraine looking for a new career after facing politically motivated charges of abuse of power and corruption in Tbilisi. But he soon found that replicating the fast-track reforms he had pushed at home was impossible. “In Georgia, Saakashvili was a kind of tsar, able to make what he wanted happen,” said Ghia Nodia, his former education minister in Georgia. “But in Ukraine he’s only a governor. He’s much weaker and he’s forced to make compromises he would rather not.”

Initially, the ex-president was reluctant to learn that lesson, hoping he would be able to thrust aside any members of the local elite who stood in his way. For months after arriving in Odessa, Saakashvili waged a furious PR war with Trukhanov. Social media became a key front, with each politician attending an extraordinary number of events and publicizing them online. Trukhanov’s Facebook page, written in the third person and exclusively in Russian, showed him opening a never-ending procession of sports facilities, overseeing children building a giant paper boat, and wishing athletes from his network of Thai boxing gyms luck in their international competitions. Saakashvili’s Facebook page, written in the first person in both Ukrainian and Russian, showed him in a traditional embroidered shirt dancing with older Ukrainian women, moving his office to a tent at a stalled construction site, and celebrating with newlyweds at a new twenty-four-hour wedding center.

The two men seemed to represent two parallel Odessas. Saakashvili looked to the future, to a post-Euromaidan Odessa that would finally root out the corruption of the past and build a modern city. Trukhanov, on the other hand, is the master of an Odessa where Ukraine’s 2011 revolution never happened, and where cronies of the deposed President Viktor Yanukovych would be free to continue business as usual.

They even observed different holidays. Saakashvili marked the end of World War II on May 8, the European day of remembrance, while Trukhanov celebrated it on May 9, the Soviet Victory Day. But the clash wasn’t just about corruption or ideology — it was also about who would be the real head in the region and have the right to imprint his vision on it.

With control over the legislature in Odessa, Trukhanov was often in the position to deny Saakashvili his vision. One of the early reforms, a sleek new citizens’ service center, floundered as funds ran dry.
Technically it was under the authority of the city — and Trukhanov refused to fund the project.

Over time, however, the conflict became less pronounced. According to Saakashvili’s advisor Maria Gaidar, things began to change after the October 2015 local elections, when Trukhanov defeated Sasha Borovik, Saakashvili’s close ally, in the race for mayor. Saakashvili also failed to win a supportive majority in Odessa’s Regional Assembly. The episode made Saakashvili realize that he wouldn’t be able to crush Trukhanov and his friends.

“Now he knows that even to build a library in Odessa he needs to talk to these guys,” Borovik says. A Harvard-educated former Microsoft executive, Borovik had been a member of Saakashvili’s team of reformers, but made a quiet exit in June and now lives between New York and Munich, working for a technology start-up.

Before leaving, Borovik says, he read about how the United States cooperated with the Italian mafia during World War II to advance the war effort against Mussolini. He was trying to understand when it could be morally acceptable to collaborate with criminal elements. In the end, he says, it was more of a compromise than he could make.

But, according to Borovik, Saakashvili has no problem cutting the sort of unsavory deals needed to get things done. “Misha is being a Lyndon Johnson,” he said, referring to Johnson’s ability to play dirty politics and push through progressive legislation where the idealist John F. Kennedy could not.

One of the bigger projects Saakashvili has pushed is the Odessa-Reni highway, which is meant to replace the current dismal road between Odessa and Romania with a modern four-lane road at a cost of $4.6 billion.

But all of the early tenders for building the highway have gone to the city construction empire dominated by Trukhanov, according to Arkadiy Topov of a local anti-corruption watchdog. The companies linked to the mayor are known to build roads at up to four times the comparable rate in other parts of the country.

When asked by Foreign Policy, Saakashvili insisted that the tender process had been transparent, but had no direct response to concerns that the costs of building the highway would likely be inflated to maximize graft, creating new fortunes and perpetuating Odessa’s reputation as a hotbed of corruption.

Moments before, Saakashvili had addressed the audience at a major conference, blasting former President Leonid Kuchma, who was seated in front of him, for creating today’s corrupt elite. But even as Saakashvili has made a career of calling out the failings of Ukraine’s leaders and their propensity to collaborate with the old system, he conveniently sidesteps the fact that he has done the same thing.

But Saakashvili’s tactics only point to the larger problem. Nearly three years since the Euromaidan revolution, Ukraine’s reformers have failed to break the back of the corrupt structures that still grip the country. As a result, providing tangible signs of change — even something as simple as new roads — means collaborating with the very system the revolution was supposed to uproot.

In the photo, Mikheil Saakashvili speaks during a rally in Odessa on October 28, 2015.

Photo credit: ALEXEY KRAVTSOV/AFP/Getty Images

Migrant children leave France's Calais 'Jungle' camp for UK families

Calais prefecture confirmed two dozen unaccompanied minors were already bound for new life in Britain

'Jungle' migrant camp in Calais, France, as authorities prepare to raze the encampment, move thousands of migrants to shelters nationwide (AFP)

 

Saturday 15 October 2016 18:30 UTC

Unaccompanied migrant children from the Calais "Jungle" camp on Saturday began arriving in Britain, French authorities said.

The Calais prefecture confirmed that two dozen unaccompanied minors were already bound for a new life in Britain, where they have family members.

"Five Syrian minors and one Afghan minor have just been transferred to the United Kingdom. From Monday, a dozen more minors will follow, then on Tuesday, a dozen more," a spokesman told AFP.

The Children's Commissioner for England has previously said about 300 children in the camp, from countries including Syria and Afghanistan, will come to the UK, the BBC said.

The Calais spokesman added there was "no deal for a larger-scale plan" to dispatch more of the 1,300 minors in the "Jungle", according to figures from French NGO France Terre

The children have been living in squalid conditions in the Calais encampment where charities estimate up to 10,000 migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia have settled in the hope of reaching Britain. The camp faces demolition.

Saturday also saw the start of construction on a wall designed to block migrant access to the Calais port, a magnet for would-be stowaways who target UK-bound lorries.

The first four-metre high concrete panels in the so-called "anti-intrusion" wall were moved into place, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.

When complete, the wall will stretch for about a kilometre and add to some 30 kilometres of existing wire fences along the road leading to the port.

"Work is being undertaken on schedule and should be finished by the year's end," said the Calais prefecture spokesman of the $3m structure, which Britain has agreed to finance.

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The "Jungle" has become a symbol of the Europe's biggest migrant crisis since the World War II and a major source of Anglo-French tension, leading President Francois Hollande to demand that the site be demolished before the end of 2016.

The French government has yet to give an official date for dismantling the camp.

Initial indications that it might happen as early as this Tuesday, however, proved premature and the plan has been put back at least a week, sources indicated.

Meanwhile, work has been stepped up on the creation of reception centres across France to house as many as 9,000 people from Calais.

On Friday, some 200 people demonstrated at Croisilles, about an hour inland from Calais, against the proposed creation of a migrant reception centre for 60 people once the Jungle actually closes, a prefecture source said Saturday.

The source said the rally, which the local mayor said was organised by locals but had attracted a number of far-right National Front supporters, passed off without incident.

In a further development on Saturday, 50 lawyers arrived at the camp to provide the migrants with advice so they could fill in forms and be "aware of and assert their rights", Flor Tercero, head of an association of lawyers for foreigners' rights, told AFP.

"We are well aware that the 'Jungle' is a place where living conditions are undignified and inhuman and that cannot go on," Tercero said.

Away from Calais, a French fishing boat earlier Saturday came to the aid of four migrants who ran into difficulties in the English Channel as they made for England in a makeshift vessel, local authorities said.

The fishing boat rescued the group, all four of whom were suffering from hypothermia, and handed them over to police.

Nearly 200 nations agree binding deal to cut greenhouse gases

Deal reached on greenhouse gas cuts

By Clement Uwiringiyimana -Sat Oct 15, 2016

Nearly 200 nations have agreed a legally binding deal to cut back on greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air conditioners, a major move against climate change that prompted loud cheers when it was announced on Saturday.

The deal, which includes the world's two biggest economies, the United States and China, divides countries into three groups with different deadlines to reduce the use of factory-made hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases, which can be 10,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as greenhouse gases.

"While diplomacy is never easy, we can work together to leave our children a planet that is safer, more prosperous, more secure, and more free than the one that was left for us," the White House said in a statement on the deal.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the deal was "a monumental step forward" as he left the talks in the Rwandan capital of Kigali late on Friday.

Under the pact, developed nations, including much of Europe and the United States, commit to reducing their use of the gases incrementally, starting with a 10 percent cut by 2019 and reaching 85 percent by 2036.

Many wealthier nations have already begun to reduce their use of HFCs.

Two groups of developing countries will freeze their use of the gases by either 2024 or 2028, and then gradually reduce their use. India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and the Gulf countries will meet the later deadline.

They refused the earlier date because they have fast-expanding middle classes who want air conditioning in their hot climates, and because India feared damaging its growing industries.

"Last year in Paris, we promised to keep the world safe from the worst effects of climate change. Today, we are following through on that promise," said U.N. environment chief Erik Solheim in a statement, referring to 2015's Paris climate talks.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerrydelivers his keynote addres to promote U.S. climate and environmental goals, at the Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on the elimination of hydro fluorocarbons (HFCs) use, held in Rwanda's capital Kigali, October 14, 2016. REUTERS/James Akena

GAINING MOMENTUM

The deal binding 197 nations crowns a wave of measures to help fight climate change this month. Last week, the 2015 Paris Agreement to curb climate-warming emissions passed its required threshold to enter into force after India, Canada and the European Parliament ratified it.

But unlike the Paris agreement, the Kigali deal is legally binding, has very specific timetables and has an agreement by rich countries to help poor countries adapt their technology.

A quick reduction of HFCs could be a major contribution to slowing climate change, avoiding perhaps 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 Fahrenheit) of a projected rise in average temperatures by 2100, scientists say.

Environmental groups had called for an ambitious agreement on cutting HFCs to limit the damage from the roughly 1.6 billion new air conditioning units expected to come on stream by 2050, reflecting increased demand from an expanding middle class in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Benson Ireri, a senior policy adviser at aid group Christian Aid, said that all African countries had volunteered for the earlier deadline because they worried about global warming pushing more of their citizens into poverty.

"It was a shame that India and a handful of other countries chose a slower time frame for phasing down HFCs but the bulk of nations, including China, have seen the benefits of going for a quicker reduction. It’s also been encouraging to see small island states and African countries a part of this higher ambition group," he said in a statement.

A scientific panel advising the signatories to the deal said phasing out HFCs will cost between $4 billion and $6 billion, said Manoj Kumar Singh, India's joint secretary at the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

"The implementation starts from 2024 onwards so there is enough time to plan and mobilize finance,” he told Reuters.

Donors had already put $80 million in a fund to start implementing the agreement, said Gina McCarthy, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But Sergey Vasiliev, the head of the Russian delegation, said Russia's estimates of the costs were higher and argued countries' contributions to a multilateral fund to help poor countries adapt their technology should be voluntary.

The details of the funding will be finalised at a later meeting.

"We think it is more than $10 billion and some experts estimated up to $20 billion,” he told Reuters.

The HFC talks build on the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which succeeded in phasing out the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), widely used at that time in refrigeration and aerosols.

The protocol contains provisions for noncompliance, ranging from the provision of technical and financial assistance to trade sanctions in ozone depleting substances, which will be widened to include HFCs.

The original aim of the Montreal Protocol was to stop the depletion of the ozone layer, which shields the planet from ultraviolet rays linked to skin cancer and other conditions.

That effort cost $3.5 billion over 25 years, said Stephen Olivier Andersen, the director of research at Washington-based think tank Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. Scientists say it prevented 2 million cases of skin cancer.

(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)