Bali U.N. climate talks set to seek 2009 deal

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After talks lasting beyond a planned Friday deadline, disputes lingered about how far a final "road map" for a climate pact to succeed the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol should demand action by China, India and other developing nations.

"We support this," Humberto Rosa, Portugal's Secretary of State for Environment, told a session of weary delegates called to debate a compromise among almost 190 nations after two weeks of negotiations in Bali, Indonesia.

But the meeting broke off after objections from China, saying that many delegation leaders were still in side talks outside the plenary. If approved, a draft decision would launch two years of talks on a sweeping new long-term treaty to involve all nations.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Bali on Saturday morning for an unscheduled return to the talks from East Timor. He was due to hold a news conference later in the morning.

The talks had been bogged down by a row between the United States, which opposes a guideline that rich countries should cut emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and the European Union, which favoured the target.

A draft compromise, reached after days of acrimony at a beach resort on the Indonesian island, relegated the range to a footnote from a more prominent position in the preamble.

"Deep cuts in global emissions will be required" to avoid dangerous climate change, the preamble says.

The United States, the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases and the only industrialised nation not party to Kyoto, said it was satisfied with the compromise. "We can live with the preamble," U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson told Reuters.

BAN HOPEFUL

"I think it is encouraging that the Bali conference has agreed on a decision to launch negotiations with a timebound negotiation by the end of 2009," Ban told Reuters.

"Reaching agreement requires a delicate balance to be struck," said Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesia's Environment Minister who was presiding over the talks, imploring delegates not to come up with new objections to a draft text worked out overnight.

Washington opposed mention of firm 2020 guidelines for cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, saying it would prejudge the outcome of negotiations on a new treaty meant to slow ever more droughts, heatwaves, storms and rising seas.

Most nations favour starting two years of negotiations ending with a broad new pact in 2009 to succeed Kyoto, which obliges 37 industrialised nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

The United Nations says a new deal, mainly on braking fossil fuel use, must be in place by the end of 2009 to give parliaments time to ratify and to reassure carbon markets and investors looking beyond 2012.

U.N. officials said one section of text still undecided was how far developing nations should be required to take "actions" or make less demanding "contributions" to fight global warming.

The main negotiating bloc of developing countries, the G77, said it was not ready to make new efforts to fight climate change by cutting emissions from fossil fuels. It fears curbs would cramp economic growth aimed at lifting millions out of poverty.

"People are negotiating, they are posturing, and not rising above entrenched national positions," said Angus Friday, Grenada's Ambassador to the U.N. and chair of the Alliance of Small Island states.

"We are just very disappointed at this stage. We are ending up with something so watered down there was no need for 12,000 people to gather here in Bali to have a watered down text. We could have done that by email," he said.

The preamble includes a reference to findings by the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Climate Panel, which said emissions by rich nations would have to be cut by 25 to 40 percent by 2020 to avert the worst effects of warming.