U.S. cool to talks on next phase of global climate pact

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Long nights of backroom wrangling and alast-minute tangle produced a deal Saturday that opens a small doorto international talks about what comes "beyond Kyoto" as the worldgrapples with the threat of global warming.

U.S. envoys to a U.N. conference, allied with some developingcountries, including oil producers, blocked any more ambitious effortto cap fossil-fuel emissions after reductions mandated by the KyotoProtocol, the climate pact rejected by President Bush, expire in2012.

Saturday's agreement was not a "foothold," said negotiator MichaelZammit Cutajar, a Maltese diplomat. "It's a finger-hold, like hangingon by your nails."

What the annual climate conference approved was a "seminar" nextMay, as proposed by the European Union, but where governments canonly informally raise issues, including next steps on control ofcarbon dioxide and other emissions blamed for warming.

The United States avoided any commitment to negotiate mandatoryreductions in emissions, the idea Bush rejected in 2001 when herenounced Kyoto. Bush said Kyoto would harm the U.S. economy andcomplained that China, India and other poor but industrializingnations were exempt from the 1997 pact's short-term goals.

If the Europeans or others at next year's seminar launchdiscussions about a future treaty framework, U.S. diplomats willlikely ignore them. "We think it's premature," the U.S. delegationhead, Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, said last week.

AP