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Azerbaijan president: We should not be blamed for fossil

fuels

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Comments highlight tension at heart of climate talks

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U.N. chief Guterres tells world leaders to 'pay up'

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Many world leaders absent from the summit

(Recasts with Azerbaijan comments)

By William James and Kate Abnett

BAKU, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Azerbaijani President Ilham

Aliyev used a keynote speech at the COP29 climate summit to lash

out at Western critics of his country's oil and gas industry,

saying it had been the victim of a "well-orchestrated campaign

of slander and blackmail".

The comments came on the second day of a summit at which

nearly 200 nations are meeting to discuss how they can cut

fossil fuel emissions, and moments before United Nations

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said doubling down on fossil

fuels was an absurd strategy.

The airing of these opposing views on the main stage

underscore the challenge at the heart of the climate

negotiations: many Western states remain dependent on fossil

fuels while at the same time seeking to pressure others who

produce them into shifting to greener energy sources.

At the same time, a Dutch appeal court issued a landmark

climate ruling in favour of oil and gas company Shell,

dismissing an order for it to sharply reduce emissions.

Azerbaijan's oil and gas revenues accounted for 35% of its

economy in 2023, down from 50% two years earlier. The government

says these revenues will decline to 22% by 2028.

"As a president of COP29 of course, we will be a strong

advocate for green transition, and we are doing it. But at the

same time, we must be realistic," said Aliyev, who has labelled

his country's oil and gas resources a "gift from god".

"Countries should not be blamed for having them, and should

not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market,

because the market needs them. The people need them."

He singled out the United States, the world's largest

historic carbon emitter, and the European Union for particular

criticism.

"Unfortunately, double standards, a habit to lecture other

countries, and political hypocrisy became kind of modus operandi

for some politicians, state-controlled NGOs and fake news media

in some Western countries," he said.

The United States is the world's largest oil and gas

producer. European countries, meanwhile, have some of the

world's strictest targets to cut emissions by 2030 - but, at the

same time have raced to secure new gas supplies following

Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. national climate advisor Ali Zaidi brushed off

President Aliyev's remarks, saying if every country decarbonized

at the pace of the United States, the world would meet its

climate targets. The EU declined to comment.

PAY UP

Speaking next, Guterres' said time was running out to limit

a destructive rise in global temperatures and called on world

leaders to provide more cash to help prevent climate-led

humanitarian disasters

"On climate finance, the world must pay up, or humanity will

pay the price," Guterres said. "The sound you hear is the

ticking clock. We are in the final countdown to limit global

temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and time is not on our

side."

This year's summit is supposed to be focused on raising

hundreds of billions of dollars to fund a global transition to

cleaner energy sources and limit the climate damage caused by

carbon emissions.

But on the day of the event designed to bring together world

leaders and generate political momentum for the marathon

negotiations, many of the leading players were not present to

hear Guterres' message.

After victory for Donald Trump, who has said he will again

pull the United States out of the Paris climate accords, in the

U.S. presidential election, President Joe Biden will not attend.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent a deputy and European

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is not attending.

This year is set to be the hottest on record.

Scientists say evidence shows global warming and its impacts

are unfolding faster than expected and the world may already

have hit 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 F) of warming above the average

pre-industrial temperature - a critical threshold beyond which

it is at risk of irreversible and extreme climate change.

As COP29 began, unusual east coast U.S. wildfires that

triggered air quality warnings for New York continued to grow.

In Spain, survivors are coming to terms with the worst floods in

the country's modern history and the Spanish government has

announced billions of euros for reconstruction.

'ECONOMY KILLER'

The summit opened on Monday with a technical deal seen as

critical to launching a U.N.-backed global carbon market that

would fund billions of dollars of projects that reduce

greenhouse gas emissions.

That success was marred by a row over the summit priorities

- a procedural tug-of-war that pitched European and small island

countries against the Arab group of nations on how prominent the

future of fossil fuels should be on the agenda.

The opening procedures were delayed by at least five hours,

ending in an eventual compromise reluctantly accepted by the EU

and other aligned nations.

At a press conference on Tuesday, COP29 officials sought to

refocus attention on the summit's primary goal - agreeing a deal

for up to $1 trillion in annual climate finance for developing

countries.

"Enabling every country to take strong climate action is

100% in all countries' interests, even the largest and

wealthiest. Why? Because the climate crisis is fast becoming an

economy killer," said Simon Stiell, head of the UNFCCC climate

body that facilitates the summit.

(Additional reporting by Susanna Twidale and Richard Valdmanis;

Editing by Timothy Heritage and Alex Richardson)