Watch China and US in stand-off at climate talks

China and US in stand-off at climate talks


AFP/File – Smoke is seen rising from a chimmny in the northern port city of Tianjin where the UN Climate Change
TIANJIN, China (AFP) – UN climate talks were set to wrap up on Saturday with China and the United States locked in a stand-off, slowing down progress ahead of a major summit next month on global warming.
The major powers sparred throughout the six days of talks in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, prompting the hosts to warn on the penultimate day that the atmosphere for negotiation had deteriorated.
"I want to emphasise no compromise... on the interests of developing countries," the Chinese foreign ministry's special representative for climate change, Huang Huikang, told delegates on Friday.
"We are losing trust and confidence."
Delegates from more than 170 countries attended the latest round of the long-running United Nations negotiations that are aimed at eventually securing a binding global treaty on how to limit and cope with climate change.
World leaders failed to broker such a treaty in Copenhagen last year as developed and developing nations battled over who should carry more of the burden in cutting greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed for global warming.
The Tianjin meeting was the last big gathering before an annual UN climate summit, which will be held in Cancun, Mexico, from November 29 to December 10.
Delegates reported that progress had been made on some specific issues in Tianjin, but many others also said that negotiations were not moving quickly enough to limit global warming below dangerous levels.
"We want to call for greater urgency in the negotiations," Dessima Williams, Grenada delegate and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, told reporters on Friday.
"We have seen some movement, we are pleased with the engagement and the atmosphere, but there's much more that needs to be done and greater urgency is needed."
Chinese delegate Huang on Friday repeated China's long-held positions that for progress to be made the United States and other rich nations must commit to making bigger cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
He said they must also give money and transfer technology to developing countries to help them cut their emissions and adapt to climate change.
"Now the key is there is a lack of substantive progress on the developed countries' side," Huang said.
The United States, meanwhile, has insisted all week that it will not provide climate funds unless the big developing countries such as China allow their greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts to be monitored and verified.
Coppied by http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101009/wl_asia_afp/unclimatewarmingwrap