E.U.-U.S. differences wreck global climate talks

THE HAGUE, NOV. 25. The U.N. climate talks collapsed at the 11th hour today after the European Union and the United States failed to settle a bitter row over ways to stop global warming.

Environmentalists called the dramatic result at a U.N. climate conference in the Hague a disaster for efforts to clean up the planet's atmosphere and protect poorer nations from devastating storms and floods.

The British Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. John Prescott, stormed out the talks amid chaotic scenes, saying major players had been unable to make the compromises required by a 9.30 p.m. (IST) deadline to clinch a deal on practical steps to stop climate change. ``There isn't a deal. That's unfortunate,'' he told mediapersons as he strode out of the negotiations. ``We came so close. We couldn't get an agreement. I'm gutted. We wanted a deal, but that's life.''

The conference had tried to agree steps to implement a pact agreed in Kyoto, Japan, which called for a 5 per cent average cut in developed nations' 1990 levels of emissions by 2010. ``The world needs Kyoto,'' said Mr. Prescott. ``It needs a deal and people have got to keep on doing everything they can to get it.'' An E.U. source said the deadlock had forced the suspension of the negotiations, adding that efforts to get an agreement would be made at a meeting in May.

Poor nations and green groups had warned of environmental catastrophes if the talks among 180 countries failed to forge the first concrete steps against climate change believed to be behind major floods and storms that ravaged some Asian nations and parts of Australia this week. ``This meeting will be remembered as the moment when Governments abandoned the promise of global cooperation to protect planet earth,'' said Greenpeace. ``It's a tragedy that they didn't give it one more push'', said Mr. Alden Meyer of the U.S. Union of Concerned Scientists. ``The E.U. is going to face a very different negotiating partner if it's a Bush administration,'' he said, referring to the unresolved U.S. presidential race. Despite the setback, countries pledged to carry the Kyoto process forward.

Signatories to the treaty are expected to meet again in May, in Bonn, according to a delegation source. Negotiations to complete the ambitious 1997 Kyoto protocol on global warming had run throughout the night. But they remained hamstrung by a deep dispute between the E.U. and the U.S. on how to cut emissions of greenhouse gases - the byproduct of burning oil, gas and coal that is held responsible for the earth's warming.

- Reuters, AFP

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