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Global warming pact hits last-minute snag
December 10, 1997
Delegates met well into the night
Web posted at: 8:59 a.m. EST (1359 GMT)KYOTO, Japan (CNN) -- Negotiations for a landmark treaty on global warming ran into a last-minute hitch that could derail an international agreement on Wednesday. Developing nations objected to industrialized nations using pollution trading to help cut their greenhouse gas emissions, officials at the U.N. climate change conference said.
The officials said the main players in cutting global emissions -- the United States, European Union and Japan -- had solved their differences and were ready to go forward with a treaty on the last day of the conference.
"But some developing nations are holding the agreement hostage over emissions trading," a senior U.S. official said.
Kiyotaka Akasaka of Japan's Foreign Ministry, who is involved in the negotiations, also said the emissions trading issue was causing problems.
"While the bulk of the issues have been resolved, the problem of developing nations is still pending," Akasaka told Japanese reporters.
The U.S. official did not name which countries were holding up an agreement.
"But it involves major players," he said.
Under the trading proposal, countries exceeding their emissions levels could still meet their targets by buying credits from nations emitting less than they were allowed.
U.S. and European negotiators had been close to approving greenhouse emission reductions of about 6 percent below what they were at the beginning of the decade.
If the last-minute differences are settled, a deal will be presented to the 150-nation conference late Wednesday for consensus approval.
After an intense day of talks, Raul Estrada, the Argentine diplomat who has mediated negotiations, said he had high hopes of completing an agreement before the end of the day.
The accord would wrap up two years of negotiations to strengthen the 1992 Climate Change Treaty by setting legally binding limits on 34 industrial nations' emissions of such greenhouse gases as carbon dioxide and methane.
The reductions would vary slightly among the nations covered, including the United States, Japan and the European Union. Developing countries such as China would not face binding emissions caps, but were expected to take action sometime in the future.
Emissions cuts for the industrial nations would begin in 2008.
Correspondent Peter Humi, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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Related sites:
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- Official Site of the Third Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC
- Global Climate Information Project
- Climate Countdown - National Environmental Trust
- U.S. Global Climate Research Program
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