The United States administration was facing condemnation on Friday night after it refused to sign up to a United Nations statement intended to reopen worldwide talks on how to tackle climate change.
The American move, at a high-level summit in Montreal, after two weeks of talks appeared to renege on a commitment made at the Gleneagles Group of Eight summit, and promised embarrassment for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has spent 18 months trying to woo US President George Bush back into the debate on global warming.
Undeterred, more than 150 other countries were poised on Friday night to take the Kyoto Protocol into a second phase, extending the international agreement to cut emissions of greenhouse gases when its first phase expires in 2012.
Washington, which has refused to sign up to Kyoto, signalled that it did not want to be drawn into broader negotiations on climate change when, after days of tension, Harlan Watson, the chief US negotiator, walked out of talks early on Friday.
He objected to a formulation in the UN statement that suggested dialogue on climate change with no binding commitments, which he said would be tantamount to opening fresh negotiations. According to one minister present, Watson walked out after telling the meeting of ministers: ”If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, then it’s a duck.”
Margaret Beckett, the British Environment Secretary, said: ”President Bush personally agreed at Gleneagles that the Americans would be part of discussions here. It would be a great pity if the US thought for whatever reason that it could not be part of a move forward.”
One European Union insider said moves were afoot in the US camp to redraft the UN statement, but said the changes were ”trivial” in nature.
The US’s isolated stance on climate change drew thinly veiled criticism from former president Bill Clinton, who dismissed as ”flat wrong” Bush’s argument that Kyoto would damage the US economy. — Guardian Unlimited Â