UN climate talks on edge heading into final hours

By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press

DURBAN, South Africa (AP) -- The United States, China and India could scuttle attempts to save the only treaty governing global warming, Europe's top negotiator said Friday hours before a 194-nation U.N. climate conference was to close.

After two weeks of negotiations, talks went through the night Thursday with delegates struggling to keep Durban from becoming the graveyard of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

"If there is no further movement from what I have seen until 4 o'clock this morning, then I must say I don't think that there will be a deal in Durban," said Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate action.

Greenpeace director Kumi Naidoo led dozens of activists chanting, "Climate justice now!" and singing outside the main session Friday. U.N. police blocked them from the hall as delegates lined a staircase and balcony overlooking the protest, snapping pictures with small cameras and mobile phones.

The protest was meant to "inject some urgency into the process," Naidoo told The Associated Press, accusing governments of "playing political poker with the future of our planet."

Greenpeace announced later that Naidoo, who had been an observer at the talks, had been barred from the conference after leading the largest protest since it opened nearly two weeks ago. Earlier this week, an American college student heckled U.S. delegate Todd Stern as he delivered a speech. She was ejected from the hall and banned from the conference. Six Canadians also had their conference credentials lifted after staging a demonstration during an address by their environment minister, Peter Kent.

On Thursday at a meeting along the sidelines of the summit attended by South African President Jacob Zuma, scuffles broke out between his supporters and environmentalists holding up posters reading, "Zuma stand with Africa, not with USA," and "Zuma don't let Africa fry."

At the talks Friday, the proposed package would see the European Union extend its commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, but only if all other countries agree to negotiate a new treaty with legally binding obligations for everyone, not just the wealthy Kyoto group.

The EU has said it will not renew its emissions reduction pledges, which expire in one year, without agreement to begin work on a treaty to replace the Kyoto accord that would compel all countries to control their emissions, including the United States and China which are the world's two largest polluters. The U.S. never ratified the protocol, though it has made voluntary efforts to reduce emissions.

The Europeans won critical support late Thursday from an alliance of small islands and the world's poorest countries -- about 120 nations altogether -- for its proposal to start negotiations now on a deal to take effect in 2018 or possibly after 2020. Brazil and South Africa also said they would accept binding emissions limits under a new agreement. The two countries are among those in the so-called developing world that emit the most greenhouse gases.

Ministers or senior negotiators from 28 countries then worked late through the night to try to bring the U.S., China and India on board.

Schedules were disrupted throughout Friday as top-level negotiations intensified. The U.S. and Chinese delegations canceled briefings for journalists.

Lower-level delegates who had labored for 10 days over technical issues crowded the cafeterias and coffee bars while ministers and top-level negotiators grappled with the decisive political issues and remained largely out of sight.

Both China and the U.S. have said they would be amenable to the EU proposal to negotiate a post-2020 agreement, but each attached riders that appeared to hobble prospects for unanimous acceptance. India, which lags behind China in development even though its economy is expanding rapidly, was taking "a relatively tough stand here," Hedegaard said.

The United States, whose Congress is generally seen as hostile on the climate issue, is concerned about conceding any competitive business advantage to China. Beijing, too, is resisting the notion that it has become a developed country on par with the U.S. or Europe, saying it still has hundreds of millions of impoverished people.

Rich countries are legally bound to reduce carbon emissions while developing countries take voluntary actions.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)