160 Nations Endorse Pact on Global Warming Compliance

Negotiators ultimately agreed to set rules for enforcing the Kyoto pact by late 2000, including tough measures to guard against cheating and penalties for countries that fail to comply. They also vowed to decide within two years guidelines for market-based programs to make it cheaper and easier for countries to cut pollution.

The Kyoto accord binds industrialized countries to sharp reductions in greenhouse gases over the next 13 years. But the pact leaves many issues unresolved, including when and how developing countries will take on obligations for curbing their emissions. The pact faces an uphill fight in the Senate, in part because of objections to the exemptions for large developing countries such as China, which will soon surpass the United States as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases.

The accord was formally signed on Thursday by the Clinton administration, but U.S. officials insist they will not submit the pact for the Senate ratification needed for it to become law until improvements are made.

The rift among developing countries emerged earlier in the week when Argentina and Kazakhstan announced they would voluntarily adopt restrictions on the growth of their emissions. Since then, more than a dozen other developing nations have expressed interest in taking on a variety of commitments for curbing pollution at home.

Some saw the movement as the diplomatic equivalent of last year's pledge by British Petroleum to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions -- an announcement that fragmented industrial opposition to a climate treaty and led to subsequent declarations by more than a dozen other major corporations.

"The decisions taken in Buenos Aires show that governments have begun to roll up their sleeves and get down to the serious business of reducing greenhouse gas emissions," said Fred Krupp, director of the the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund.