Ottawa global warming talks end without deal
December 8, 2000
OTTAWA, Canada (Reuters) -- The United States and Europe failed
Thursday to bridge major differences after two days of talks
aimed at salvaging a pact to curb global warming.
Officials from both sides stressed they had made some progress in
closing the gap between the European Union and the so-called
"umbrella group" of the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia
and New Zealand.
But they also made it clear that significant differences still
remain over how best to cut emissions of "greenhouse gases,"
believed by many scientists to be responsible for the global
warming trend, and how to meet promises of emission cuts hatched
at a 1997 meeting in Kyoto, Japan.
"Much remains to be done," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State
David Sandalow told reporters as he left the Ottawa meeting. His
comments were echoed by the EU side.
"There is certainly a big gap to be bridged between us and the
umbrella group of countries," said James Currie, the European
Union's director-general for the environment.
The meeting was the first time the two sides had made contact
since last month's dramatic collapse of U.N.-sponsored talks in
The Hague to set a global strategy on cutting greenhouse gas
emissions.
It is now up to member governments to decide what to do next. EU
officials had said before the Ottawa talks that if the two sides
could be brought close enough together, it might well pave the
way for a meeting of ministers in Oslo next week.
But Canadian Environment Minister David Anderson, when asked
whether he thought there would be a meeting in Oslo, replied:
"That would be unlikely."
Canadian delegation head Alan Nymark was slightly more upbeat
than Anderson, saying the two sides had narrowed the number of
issues that separated them.
"Whether (ministers) feel the circumstances are right for a
meeting before Christmas depends on several different continents
coming to that conclusion in a relatively short period of time.
That's quite a large task," he said.
Anderson is one of the ministers who will decide whether a
meeting should be held next week.
"It would have been nice to get the officials to hammer out an
agreement, but that has not happened. That's the bad news,"
Anderson told Reuters by telephone from Washington after
conferring with officials participating in the talks.
"The good news is that there was a general agreement to move
ahead, a clear desire to move ahead from (where we were) at The
Hague."
The two sides disagree over Washington's insistence that
countries be allowed to offset carbon dioxide absorbed by forests
and farmlands against pollution reduction targets agreed in
Kyoto.
At The Hague, the EU rejected a last-minute compromise that would
have allowed limited use of such "carbon sinks" but in Ottawa the
15-nation bloc gave an indication it might be softening its
position.
"We accept the idea with conditions, and the conditions are
really limiting the scale...but of course it's not an agreement
now because we did not agree on (anything) at this stage," said
French representative Laurence Tubiana.
The EU wants countries to cut their emissions rather than buy
reduction credits from other countries.
Signatories to the Kyoto agreement were supposed to set detailed
rules to meet a target of cutting emissions to 5 percent below
1990 levels by 2008-2012.
Article by Reuters
SOURCE: CNN
****************************************************************
To post a submission by email at climate-newswire@sidsnet.org
To unsubscribe, email to majordomo@sidsnet.org with the message:
unsubscribe climate-newswire
To receive updates via email, send an email to majordomo@sidsnet.org with the message:
subscribe climate-newswire
No SUBJECTS required either case.
Brought to you on the SMALL Island Developing States Network: http://www.sidsnet.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Dec 08 2000 - 15:40:09 EST