Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper canceled a planned meeting with European Union leaders to avoid facing criticism over his environmental policies, local media reported on Saturday.

Harper was supposed to take part in a Canada-EU summit in Finland at the end of November, but canceled out, citing the need to stay close to home because of his government's fragile minority status, according to a report by the Globe and Mail newspaper.

Sandra Buckler, the prime minister's spokeswoman, said that Harper explained to Finnish Prime Minister Maati Vanhanen in a telephone call Friday that since Canada and the EU had met this spring, another encounter "would not be needed so soon afterward."

However Harper still plans to attend end-of-the-month trade talks in Hanoi, and NATO meetings in Latvia just two days after the scheduled Canada-EU summit.

Ahead of the planned summit, European officials announced that Kyoto would be on the agenda at the meetings.

Two meetings in 2005 between Canada's former Liberal government and the EU made prominent and specific declarations of their support for the Kyoto environmental protocol, which sets targets that the Harper government does not feel it can meet.

The Harper government, in their controversial Clean Air Act introduced last month, sets no short term targets for reducing emissions, but puts a greater emphasis on cutting down air pollution.

Source: Xinhua