Sunday October 28 5:22 AM ET

Climate Talks Reach Climax Without Main Polluter

By Gilles Trequesser

MARRAKESH, Morocco (Reuters) - U.N. climate talks on a pact to limit global warming resume Monday with the world's main polluter, the United States, on the sidelines.

The two-week meeting in the southern Moroccan city will seek to produce a legally binding document for industrialized nations to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade.

But the United States, the world's number one industrial power and its biggest polluter, is unlikely to return to the four-year-old pact.

Washington in March surprisingly pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites) created in 1997 in Japan's ancient capital, which many scientists see as the last attempt to save the planet from the destructive impact of climate changes they expect this century.

President Bush (news - web sites) said the deal agreed by his predecessor Bill Clinton was ``fatally flawed'' and would harm the U.S. economy.

The Marrakesh meeting, known as COP7 -- the seventh conference of the parties to a U.N. treaty signed in 1992 at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro -- is expected to tie up loose ends on the Kyoto Protocol after countries struck a political compromise on the key issues in Bonn in July.

Supporters of the pact say a legal agreement in Marrakesh should allow countries to ratify Kyoto -- becoming legally bound by it -- by next year.

The pact binds industrialized countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere and are blamed for global warming, by an average of five percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

CONFERENCE CHAIRMAN OPTIMISTIC

Moroccan Environment Minister Mohamed El Yazghi, who will chair the meeting of delegates from 180 countries, was confident the Marrakesh session would ``translate into legal text'' what was sealed at an eleventh-hour deal in July, and ensure compliance.

``I'm very optimistic because a lot of groundwork was done in Bonn,'' he told Reuters, in reference to questions such the role of forests in soaking up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and what penalties to impose on countries failing to meet agreed targets.

Mindful that some countries might want to backtrack on the Bonn deal, the head of the European Union (news - web sites) delegation, Belgian Energy Minister Olivier Deleuze, said no door would be reopened in Morocco that was closed in Germany.

``We are not renegotiating the Kyoto Protocol,'' he told Reuters in Brussels.

Some countries, reluctant to proceed without the United States, may be tempted to wait for new proposals from Washington, but both Yazghi and Deleuze said none should be expected.

The U.S. delegation would not bring any rival proposals to Marrakesh, the soft-spoken Moroccan minister said, calling it ''a wise decision...in order not to disrupt the agenda of the conference.''

SELFISH U.S.?

He predicted, however, that delegations would ``try and convince'' the Americans to reverse their stand on the Kyoto Protocol.

Countries accounting for 55 percent of industrial nations' carbon dioxide emissions must ratify the pact and the absence of the United States has been particularly felt because it represents about a third of the industrialized world's output.

Yazghi deplored the fact that that the leading role the U.S. has adopted in the fight against terrorism in the wake of the September 11 attacks on its territory does not extend to the climate talks.

The United States' interest ``clearly is not to be isolated,'' he said. ``But they run the risk of appearing to defend only their own interests.''

As the United States seeks international cooperation in its campaign to destroy Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s network, which it accuses of organizing last month's suicide airliner attacks on New York and Washington, the Marrakesh talks would be a reminder that globalization could have a positive side, Deleuze said.

``I am not convinced (climate change) is less important because of September 11, maybe it is even more important,'' he said.

-- bastard dubya (shitting up @ the. planet), October 28, 2001

Answers

George does not talk about climax. He does it. Oh, oh, oh.

-- (Laura@Texas.tango), October 28, 2001.

Kyoto is a ton of bullshit. It would put Americans out of work left and right as Mexico and China are exempted. Congress did not support it (including all the dems) back when Clinton offered it up for debate, and it's no better now.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), October 29, 2001.