CALGARY — Premier Ralph Klein's constituency office had an unwelcome visitor Tuesday when an environmental protester walked in and locked himself in the vault.

The protester, Tooker Gomberg, was in the dark, 20-square-metre vault of the converted bank for 90 minutes while police searched the archives to find the combination to the lock. They opened it around 1:30 p.m. and arrested him.

Gomberg was later charged by police with interference with property, mischief, assault, and theft under $5,000. Further charges may be pending.

Another man, Jerry Lynch, was charged with intereference with property and mischief.

The office was evacuated during the protest but no one was hurt. Klein was in Edmonton for the fall sitting of the legislature.

"There was no violence or anything," said Calgary police Insp. Rene Bailly.

Gomberg, a former Edmonton city councillor and unsuccessful candidate in the Toronto mayoral race, has long been a thorn in Klein's side. In October, he disrupted a Klein speech at Toronto's Empire Club.

He has been lobbying the Alberta government to agree to the Kyoto accord to reduce greenhouse gases.

He said he locked himself in the vault because the Klein government had failed to act on a decade-old report on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Gomberg phoned CHED radio on his cellphone from the vault to talk about the report, which he termed "the lost document."

"The lost document -- it's a blockbuster report. It's the biggest report I've seen in my 25 years of doing environmental and social work (but Klein) wouldn't respond. So we had to take further action and I'm now locked in the safe in his Calgary office.

"I'm planning to stay here until I can get a proper response from the premier."

The premier never responded and when Gomberg was led away in handcuffs from the constituency office, located in a south Calgary strip mall, Klein and the report were still on his mind.

"Why is he afraid of the lost document?" Gomberg yelled. "Why is he afraid of the lost document?"

The report is called Discussion Paper on the Potential for Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Alberta 1988-2005. It was done by Alberta Energy.

When asked later by reporters about the incident, Klein said, "Better my constituency office than on my roof."

In April, Greenpeace activists screwed solar panels to the roof of Klein's southwest Calgary bungalow to protest his opposition to Kyoto.

Asked if Gomberg was a danger, Klein said "only to himself," adding that Gomberg's "stunting does a disservice to the environmental movement because I don't think Albertans really appreciate stunts, especially when we're discussing something as serious as the Kyoto protocol."

Jim Law, Klein's spokesman in Calgary, said the incident began when Gomberg and another man walked into the constituency office with a letter believed to be about Kyoto.

"They wanted an answer and they wanted it now and they were fairly rude to the office staff and wouldn't leave until they got an answer," said Law.

The office manager couldn't give them an answer, so one man left, then Gomberg locked himself into the vault.

In Edmonton, Gordon Turtle, Klein's director of communications, said the vault did not contain confidential or valuable material.

He said the lost report was never lost and that Gomberg "doesn't have to crawl around in a vault to find it. It's been in the (legislature) library for over a decade.

Gomberg is no stranger to headlines.

He was dragged out by police from the Empire Club after shouting down Klein during the premier's speech on Alberta's concerns with the Kyoto accord.

In June 2000, Gomberg protested at the World Petroleum Congress and in March of that year he and other Greenpeace members chained themselves to a 447-tonne piece of oilsands equipment being shipped to Suncor Energy Ltd. in Fort McMurray, Alta.

In 1990, when Klein was Alberta's environment minister, Gomberg led a group of placard-waving activists up on the stage at hearing into a northern Alberta pulp mill and accused Klein of betraying the environment.

His term on Edmonton city council was marked by his avid advocacy of bicycling, once aggravating his fellow councillors by chaining his bike to Edmonton's brand new city hall.

Gomberg took his political theatrics with him when he moved to Toronto.

In 2000, he organized a group of protesters who threw pennies at the head of Imperial Oil during the company's annual general meeting to make the point it would cost only pennies per share to reduce greenhouse gases.

In the recent Ontario municipal election, he ran for mayor -- and ended up as Mel Lastman's closest challenger, although the incumbent won 80 per cent of the vote.

In 1994, during his term as an Edmonton city councillor, Gomberg once suggested that Edmonton flood its streets during the winter so people could skate to work instead of driving cars.