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 CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Prime Minister John Howard ditched his long-standing opposition to a greenhouse gas reduction target for Australia with a pledge Sunday to set a national pollution limit next year.
But critics said Howard's new stance is nothing more than a ploy to negate the environment as an issue during elections due later this year.
Howard, leader of his center-right coalition government since 1996, also told an annual meeting of his ruling Liberal Party's national council that Australia, the world's worst greenhouse gas polluter per capita, would have a carbon-trading scheme in place by 2012.
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