Climate Talks End With Slow Timetable

Germany, Britain Call for 'Urgency'

Delegates listen to speeches, Friday, Nov. 17, 2006 at the United Nations Climate conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Delegates from more than 180 nations Friday struggled into the final day of a two-week U.N. climate conference to find a compromise timetable for negotiating deeper cuts in emissions of the gases blamed for global warming.(AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo) (Karel Prinsloo - AP)

NAIROBI, Nov. 17 -- The U.N. climate conference ended Friday with agreement on the next steps toward negotiating future cuts in global warming gases, a slow-paced timetable reflecting hopes that the United States, China and others will eventually join the controls pact.

Delegates from the 165 member nations of the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, approved a schedule of talks unlikely to produce a deal on post-Kyoto emissions reductions before 2009.

In the face of mounting evidence of climate change, environmentalists called the timetable a modest step at best. Even some government ministers expressed disappointment.

There is a need "to inject greater urgency and momentum into the process of driving down global emissions," the environment ministers of Germany and Britain, Sigmar Gabriel and David Miliband, said in a joint statement.

The 1997 Kyoto pact obliges 35 industrial nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States and Australia are the only major industrial countries to reject that accord.

President Bush contends that the terms of the agreement would damage the U.S. economy and should include cutbacks by poorer countries as well.

Under the key agreement here, future meetings will review the workings of the Kyoto Protocol by 2008, with an eye toward setting new quotas on carbon dioxide and other emissions after Kyoto expires.

The review, a process that would assess the latest science and the size of necessary cutbacks, is expected to be the basis for subsequent negotiations.

China, India and other countries have long resisted efforts to begin early talks in which they and other poor but fast-developing nations -- and growing energy consumers -- might be pressured to accept mandatory cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions. The final decision assured them that the immediate process would not seek to negotiate cutbacks by developing nations.

Third World countries will probably resist emissions reductions until they see acceptance of mandatory caps by the United States, which some see as possible after Bush leaves office.