Under an agreement between Russian president Boris Yeltsin and prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto in their summit at the seaside resort of Kawana, Japanese firms would go into about 20 Russian power plants and factories to cut their greenhouse gas emissions while gaining credits for Japan's own pollution fighting efforts.

"President Yeltsin and prime minister Hashimoto have reached an agreement to begin feasibility studies on 20 promising joint implementation projects to improve energy efficiency at Russian plants and reduce greenhouse gas emissions," a government spokesman said at Kawana, 120 km (75 miles) southwest of Tokyo.

The accord was believed by energy analysts to be the first agreement since the UN meeting in Kyoto to carry out joint implementation measures, under whichcountries or firms helping to cut emissions at power plants or other polluting facilities in another country are entitled to offset the amount against their own emissions.

"Countries including the United States have been talking to Russia on cooperation to cut emissions, but this is believed to be the first time that two countries, any two countries, have actually reached a concrete agreement in terms of joint implementation efforts," director of Japan's Institute of Energy Economics Tsutomo Toichi said.

In Kyoto, Japan committed itself to a six per cent cut in emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from 1990 levels by a five-year period from 2008 to 2012, a target that is regarded as hard to fulfil without the joint projects.

Russia, on the other hand, can easily meet its target of a zero rise in emissions because of the shutdown of inefficient industries following the collapse of communism.

Energy analysts said Japan's success in doing a deal with Russia was likely to speed up effortsby other mainly developed nations to find partners for emissions trading.

Japan's trade ministry was allocated nearly $20 million in the budget for the year that started on April 1 to help Japanese firms to carry out feasibility studies for possible joint implementation projects in foreign countries.

Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co Ltd said in March that it had agreed with local governments in the Russian regions of Sakhalin and Nizhegorod to jointly carry out feasibility studies on a $3 billion power plant project.Mitsui and the local governments tentatively plan to build five energy-efficient coal-fired power plants by the early 2000s.

Trade ministry officials said they could not comment on whether or not Mitsui's plan was one of the 20 selected projects.

At the Kawana meeting, the two leaders also agreed to expand cooperation in energy to the field of nuclear technology. Initiatives include expansion of ties in the search for nuclear energy, a cornerstone of energy policy for Japan, which has nooil or gas resources. "Specialist meetings will be held jointly to discuss cooperation in fast-breeder nuclear reactor technology," said a foreign ministry statement issued after the summit talks. Russia is one step ahead of Japan in the development of fast-breeder reactors, which produce more plutonium than they consume as fuel, according to officials of the trade ministry's Science and Technology Agency.

Japan's sole prototype fast-breeder reactor has been closed since a massive sodium coolant leak accident in 1995. The accident and ensuing revelations of cover-up attempts by plant officials seriously undermined the Japanese public's trust not only in the future of fast-breeder reactors but also in the safety of the entire nuclear industry.

In contract, Russian prototype fast-breeder reactors have been running since the 1980s, though they have their share of technical glitches, the officials said. On upstream oil and gas development off Sakhalin, where more than a dozen Japanese private firms havealready been involved in exploration as part of the so-called Sakhalin I and Sakhalin II projects, Yeltsin called for more Japanese investment. Hashimoto stopped short of promising further investment but said the off-shore projects were excellent examples of successful economic cooperation between the two countries.