"Russia has been flirting with this for a while and it's really got more to do with them getting access to the European Economic Union," Macfarlane said.

"They are really doing it for their own reasons, not as part of some global drive to reduce greenhouse gases and that really exposes the fundamental flaw in Kyoto," he said.

Despite not signing up to the pact, Macfarlane said Australia, which accounts for 2.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, was on track to meet its Kyoto target of restricting any increase in emissions to eight percent by 2012.

"The potential for an increase in the costs of electricity to consumers in Australia and an obvious potential to have industry driven offshore to non-Kyoto ratifying countries means we would be crazy (to ratify the pact)," Macfarlane said.

"Until there is a system including all countries aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, not simply allowing people to trade away their sins by buying carbon credits or selling their emissions, then really the whole Kyoto system is flawed."

Australia's energy resources are a major source of the nation's wealth, with energy exports worth over A$24 billion ($17.5 billion) a year and the sector employing 120,000 people.

Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal, and supplies eight percent of world trade in liquefied natural gas.

But although Australia's conservative government is adamant it would not ratify the agreement, the country's main opposition Labor party has vowed to approve the Kyoto treaty and set up a carbon trading regime if it wins a tight Oct. 9 election.

"We need national leadership, this is a big issue for Australia," Labor leader Mark Latham told Australian television.

"We're at risk of losing our national icons, our natural assets, and (that's) all the more reason for Australia to follow the international pattern, become part of Kyoto, become part of the effort against global warming. The move to approve Kyoto by Russia, which accounts for 17 percent of world emissions, takes the pact a step close to being enforced worldwide.

Kyoto becomes binding once it has been ratified by 55 percent of the signatories, which must altogether account for 55 percent of developed countries' carbon dioxide emissions.

The pact, so far ratified by 122 nations, has met the first condition. But they account for only 44 percent of emissions.