EU to boycott US-led climate talks

BALI: European nations threatened to boycott US-led climate talks next month unless Washington accepts a range of numbers for negotiating deep reductions of global-warming emissions at a UN conference here.

The move on Thursday raised the stakes as delegates from nearly 190 nations entered final-hour talks on Bali aimed at launching negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

The United States, Japan and several other governments refuse to accept language in a draft document suggesting that industrialised nations consider cutting emissions by 25 per cent to 40 per cent by 2020, saying specific targets would limit the scope of future talks.

The European Union and others say the figures reflect the measures scientists say are needed to rein in global warming and head off predictions of rising sea levels, worsening floods and droughts, and the extinction of plant and animal species.

"No result in Bali means no Major Economies Meeting," said Sigmar Gabriel, top EU environment official from Germany, referring to a series of separate climate talks initiated by US President George W Bush in September.

"This is the clear position of the EU. I do not know what we should talk about if there is no target."

The US invited 16 other major economies, including European countries, Japan, China and India, to discuss a programme of what are expected to be nationally determined, voluntary cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions.