Hopes rise on climate talks

Carbon dioxide emissions pose a great threat to the environment

TRIESTE, Italy -- Delegates arriving for an international conference in Italy are hoping to put past disputes behind them in an effort to find common ground on environmental issues.

G8 environment ministers are meeting in Trieste, Italy, on Friday for initial talks on a climate change agreement which proved elusive last November at an environment summit in The Hague collapsed.

The Hague talks largely failed after the U.S. and EU failed to find a compromise on how to tackle global warming.

The next international push to find agreement is due to start in July in Bonn, Germany.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency head Christine Todd Whitman said the U.S. was ready to work with the EU to create a clean environment.

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"The United States is interested in seeing a clean environment for the world and we are going to work towards that.

"We are a new administration, we're going to take a look at everything that's on the table."

The Hague talks collapsed amid disagreements over the Kyoto environmental accord, negotiated in 1997, which calls for all industrialised nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, by a little over five percent by 2010.

Ministers from the world's seven largest Western industrialised nations and Russia will attend the three-day Trieste meeting.

Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, who chaired the Hague summit, and the EU's environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom will also be in Trieste.

"I'm very hopeful that these will be positive talks and that we can move things forward," Wallstrom said.

But Italian Environment Minister Willer Bordon was more cautious, saying he hoped for some progress on implementing the Kyoto accord, although he did not expect any definitive decisions.

"But with the G8 ministers, the EU's environment representative and, hopefully, the chair of the Hague summit present, we should be able to make some progress," he said.

The U.S. is expected to miss its targets set down in the Kyoto agreement and concerns have arisen with the new Washington administration's stance on global warming.

Environmentalists have accused Bush of having a poor track record in environmental policy while he was Texas governor.

Italian police have bolstered security around the city ahead of possible demonstrations by anti-globalisation demonstrators. Protest groups have said they will hold mass demonstrations against the G8 on Saturday and Sunday.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Kyoto climate summit
European Union

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