UN climate talks on edge heading into final hours

[December 09, 2011]  DURBAN, South Africa (AP) -- Negotiators closed in on a deal to save the only treaty governing global warming Friday, but it could still be scuttled by objections from the United States, China and India, the top European negotiator said.

A 194-nation U.N. climate conference is due to end later Friday after two weeks of negotiating. Talks went through the night Thursday, with negotiators struggling to keep Durban from being labeled 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.

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 -- including the world's two largest polluters the United States and China -- to control their emissions. 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, two of the biggest emitters in the developing world, said they, too, would accept binding emissions limits under a new agreement.

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

The EU's failure to commit to another five-year reduction period would leave the landmark agreement in place, but gutted of its most important element.

Both China and the U.S. said they would be amenable to the EU proposal to negotiate a post-2020 agreement, but each attached riders that appeared to hobble its prospects for unanimous acceptance.

The United States, with its eye on Congress that 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.

[Associated Press; By ARTHUR MAX]

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