U.S. Greeted Coolly at Climate Summit

KYOTO, Japan, Dec. 1—The United States received a chilly response during its opening statements today at U.N. talks on a climate-change treaty, a meeting that Japan's foreign minister said "could change the history of mankind."

At the opening assembly here, U.S. delegate Melinda Kimble reiterated the U.S. position, which includes holding the line on greenhouse-gas emissions at the 1990 level by 2010. She characterized more stringent proposals made by the European Union and others as unrealistic or ineffective. Her comments were met in the assembly hall with silence.

In part as a response to worldwide criticism of the U.S. position, President Clinton announced in Washington Monday that he will send Vice President Gore to Kyoto to try to help forge an international agreement. That decision, after months of refusing to send such a high-level American to the meeting, represented a risk for Clinton and for Gore. [Story on Page A24.]

Kimble, an assistant secretary of state, said for the first time, however, that the United States is willing to consider a proposal to lighten the burdens of some countries that face unusual difficulties in cutting greenhouse-gas emissions.

Known as "differentiation," this proposal would allow countries to adopt different goals, instead of assigning one target for all developed nations. Coal-dependent Australia is one of the leading advocates of flexible targets.

"In the interest of moving our negotiations forward and seeking to be as flexible as possible . . . we are prepared to consider the possibility of limited, carefully bounded differentiation," Kimble said.

By showing flexibility on differentiation, the U.S. side -- which is being led by Stuart E. Eizenstat, the under secretary of state for economic, business and agricultural affairs, Kimble and Thomas S. Foley, the U.S. ambassador to Tokyo -- was hoping to soften resistance to some of its proposals. But the gambit did little to quell criticism of the United States, which some groups regard as a major obstacle to a workable climate treaty.

"The United States is not winning any friends here," said Richard Mott, vice president of the World Wildlife Fund. "It is striking what a sour note the U.S. hit."

The aim of the conference is to get world leaders to agree to legally binding steps to limit the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and cause the temperature of the Earth to rise. Scientists fear continued warming could cause many dangerous changes in the atmosphere, including the spread of malaria into colder climates.

While the United States and the European Union are showing some signs of compromise, Washington finds itself far apart from the majority with its demand that developing nations participate to some degree in any agreement reached.

In preliminary meetings in Berlin that preceded this conference, participating nations agreed that the richer countries should take the lead in cutting emissions, and some now feel that the United States is using this issue to cloud discussions.

As the United States takes on China and other developing nations on this question, Mott said, many delegates believe the U.S. stance is inappropriate because Washington has done more to cause the greenhouse-gas problem than any other country. What it amounts to, he said, is: "The nation of sports-utility vehicles is lecturing a nation of bicycles."

Cars are a leading cause of carbon-dioxide emissions, and the U.S. appetite for big, gas-guzzling vehicles has not gone unnoticed. Some Japanese government officials and others are leaving their cars at home and pedaling to work.

Japan, as conference host, especially wants the meeting to be judged a success when it adjourns Dec. 10. For that to happen, most people here say a significant, legally binding reduction of emissions must be agreed to; holding the line as the United States proposes -- even if that means cutting back on expected economic growth -- is not seen as good enough.

Differing views about how to achieve the cuts spurred a new round of diplomatic sniping during today's opening session. Kimble, speaking to reporters after her speech, reiterated the administration's criticism of the European Union's "bubble" system for distributing the economic pain among its members. The EU is promising to cut emissions overall to 15 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. But some European countries would be allowed to reduce emissions only a little, while a few nations could increase their output by as much as 40 percent.

Kimble said the EU bubble would give Europeans an advantage, one that could harm U.S. trade interests. EU spokesman Jorgen Henningsen, director for the environment and natural resources, dismissed the complaint.

"If the strong concerns . . . are the fact that the EU position is uncomfortably ambitious for the U.S., then I would say we have a comparable concern that the U.S. position is uncomfortably unambitious from our point of view," Henningsen told Reuters Television.

The conference goal of achieving a global consensus suffered another blow today when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries issued a statement saying that emissions cuts would cost member nations $20 billion a year. OPEC said it is concerned that "the legitimate right to economic development . . . is under threat" from the Kyoto discussions. If there is a global agreement to curtail the use of coal and oil, which cause so much of the emissions problem, OPEC said it does not want to be part of it.

The lobbying and negotiating here is expected to continue for 10 days. By then, Japanese Foreign Minister Keizo Obuchi said it is the world's responsibility to agree on how to solve the global-warming problem. "It is our responsibility, which is of historical importance, to determine the future shape of the Earth and hand it over to posterity," he said.

Writer Joby Warrick in Washington contributed to this report.