Britain urged Russia to ratify the international Energy Charter as a way to create a ?rules based system? to settle cross-border disputes which could have defused its new year conflict over gas with Ukraine.

Alan Johnson, the UK?s secretary of state for trade and industry, told a session of the World Economic Forum that the Charter, to which 52 countries adhere, provided mechanisms to resolve conflicts that could have helped resolve the ?trauma? during which gas supplies were briefly cut off.