Sunday, Dec 19, 2004
Sunday, Dec 19, 2004 |
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BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA), DEC. 18. In a United Nations conference's final hours, the United States and the European Union worked out a modest deal early on Saturday to inch ahead in the international efforts to put a cap on global warming. The Americans avoided any commitment to negotiate mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, something the U.S. President, George W. Bush, rejected in 2001 when he renounced the Kyoto Protocol, which requires rollbacks in other industrial nations by 2012.
New discussion forum
On their side, the Europeans won a new forum for discussing just that — a ``seminar'' next May at which Governments can informally raise a range of climate issues, including next steps on emissions control after 2012. ``The only thing we want to discuss is future options, and we will,'' said a key E.U. negotiator, Pieter van Geel, the Dutch Environment Secretary. If they do, U.S. diplomats are sure to ignore them. That was one reason other Europeans saw the Buenos Aires agreement as at best a small step to keep the multilateral process moving on climate change. ``It's a finger-hold, like hanging on by your nails,'' said Michael Zammit Cutajar of Malta, a veteran climate negotiator. The accord on the seminar was the chief outcome of a low-key, two-week annual conference on climate change, notable otherwise for its timing: on the eve of the final entry into force of the 1997 Kyoto pact next February 16. In 2001, when he rejected the Kyoto Protocol to the umbrella U.N. climate treaty, Mr. Bush said its pre-2012 emissions cuts would damage the U.S. economy, and he complained that China and other poor but industrialising countries were exempt under Kyoto. Here in Buenos Aires, the United States resisted efforts to design seminars in 2005 as forums to explore ways to control emissions after 2012.
`Talks premature'
``We think it is premature,'' the U.S. delegation chief, Paula Dobriansky, said of the idea of post-Kyoto talks. The Americans sought to focus attention here instead on long-range U.S. programmes to develop cleaner-burning energy technologies. Although they won no U.S. commitment to talk about reductions, the Europeans viewed the deal as a start, possibly to spur talks with developing nations, such as China and India, about post-2012 steps to help the climate. — AP
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