By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 13, 1997; Page A01

KYOTO, Japan, Dec. 12—In the pre-dawn hours, long after the United Nations global warming conference was supposed to have ended, exhausted U.S. and Chinese negotiators stood nose to nose, snarling at each other, in an exchange that could be heard outside the conference room.

Raul A. Estrada-Oyuela of Argentina, chairman of the conference, was just minutes away from declaring the world's first binding treaty to combat global warming dead. But finally, Estrada intervened. He suggested a compromise -- some hasty changes in the pact's language that both sides could accept. Miraculously, the talks were steered back on track.

When the final bang of the gavel struck Thursday morning, a roaring ovation rose from the 2,200 official delegates from 159 nations who negotiated the historic accord. But the applause belied the deep divisions, particularly between the United States and Europe, that brought the talks repeatedly to the brink of collapse. And the wide gulf between rich countries such as the United States and poorer countries such as China bode ominously for the next round of climate talks a year from now, when the details are supposed to be worked out.

The chaotic final days of the 11-day conference, as described by numerous participants, were an emotional roller-coaster for delegates who watched the treaty's fortunes rise, fall, and rise again.

"There were two or three times when it looked like the deal was off," said a Japanese government official at the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Right up to the last minute we were afraid the talks would fail."

The most critical moments of the 11-day meeting occurred when negotiators were nearing their physical limits after two days of nearly nonstop negotiations. The conference, which was due to end Wednesday night, stretched well into Thursday morning as delegates raced to complete their work in time to catch flights to their home capitals.

Weary delegates dozed in their chairs or sprawled in the aisles as the negotiators picked their way through pages of treaty minutiae. The arrival of dawn brought new complications: The contracts for the conference translators expired, leaving Russian and Chinese delegations without interpreters.

That the talks succeeded at all was attributed largely to the determination of the delegates and the skillful peacemaking of conference leaders such as Estrada-Oyuela. Estrada managed to prod, cajole and threaten the negotiators into compromises that many believed were impossible.

Others played crucial roles as well, including Vice President Gore, whose brief trip to Kyoto on Monday energized the negotiations and broke the logjam that had stalled the talks for a week -- the gulf between the United States and the European Union and Japan.

All three came to the conference with sharply different proposals on targets and timetables for cutting pollution, and each also had very specific ideas about what should be covered by the treaty and what should be left out.

But "the vice president rolls into town, and [suddenly] there were great expectations that the vice president is going to break the logjam . . . everyone knows that Vice President Gore wrote the book on global warming, literally, and they felt this would now be a whole different conference," Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate observer delegation, recalled yesterday in an interview.

Hagel said he kept trying to dampen expectations that Gore would be bringing "a bag of goodies," as journalists were describing it. "If people thought the vice president was coming in with goodies to lay on the table, then we in essence would have lost our leverage for the negotiations . . . I said, `Oh, no, I think the vice president wouldn't do that.' "

But, as soon as Gore departed from his written text to mention flexibility in addressing the conference, Hagel said he realized that the "goodies" had arrived.

"As I look back on it," Hagel added, "there's no question in my mind that Gore told [lead U.S. negotiator Stuart E.] Eizenstat to get a deal whatever the cost because, when you look at the final product, it totally disregarded what the president had laid out in October."

By contrast, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), another observer, always believed that the United States probably would have to agree to emissions reductions below 1990 levels, which is what Clinton had proposed, and contended that the president had not ruled it out.

A week before Gore's visit, an American negotiator signaled that the United States was willing to abandon an across-the-board standard and accept different emission levels for different countries. "It was hoped that this would begin the process . . . but there was no response," Lieberman said.

Gore had consulted with Lieberman and some others by telephone en route to Kyoto, met with the negotiators after his arrival and talked with Clinton by phone before letting it be known he would try to jump-start the process. "My reading of it was that he felt he was coming into a situation where not much was happening, the parties were beginning to be frozen and all the attention was on the United States."

Beginning Monday night and continuing into Tuesday, Eizenstat made a move to the center by agreeing to accept more aggressive cuts in emissions. Other countries responded with similar concessions, but it was not until Wednesday morning that the framework of the agreement for industrialized countries fell into place.

"There was a lot of going back and forth," said a U.S. delegation member who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Each group had issues it felt were very important, but we decided to agree to a total package or we wouldn't agree at all."

A final hitch for the developed counties came when it became clear the United States would not prevail in some of its proposals to bring developing countries gradually into the protocol. Some delegates feared that Washington and perhaps Tokyo would insist on reopening the issue of emissions targets and insist on less-aggressive targets -- a move that almost certainly would have resulted in a return to gridlock, according to Japanese government sources.

"But after consultations with high-level officials, the United States decided to stay within the existing agreement," the official said. The negotiators breathed a collective sigh of relief, and "at that moment the treaty was saved."

To cement the deal that it so badly wanted, Japan, the host country, ultimately agreed to a target significantly higher than what negotiators had said was Japan's bottom line. A call on Wednesday from Gore to Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto helped persuade Tokyo to bend. "The last thing anyone would want . . . was to say that the thing that prevented the deal from coming together was the host country not moving a final percentage point," a White House spokesman said. The final details were worked out in a five-hour meeting Wednesday between Eizenstat and his counterparts from the European Union and Japan, with each player conferring directly with "the very top levels of government" to secure approval for the deal.

But even after that major hurdle had been overcome, developing countries continued to balk at measures, such as emissions trading, that were aimed at encouraging their eventual participation.

Late in the conference, as the nations began negotiating in earnest, U.S. officials hoped that China and India would soften their resistance to make way for a treaty. But instead, both countries dug in their heels, resisting not only the idea of binding limits for developing countries but also emissions trading -- a program that wouldn't directly affect the Chinese. For their part, Chinese officials said pollution controls would have to wait until China became as developed as Western countries -- about 50 years from now, one delegation leader said.

"This is a matter of human rights," said Shukong Zhong, a Chinese environmental adviser, during a floor debate early Thursday.

China's refusal to budge on the issue exasperated the U.S. delegation and drew a rebuke from conference chairman Estrada, who called a recess and warned that he would prepared to halt them altogether. "It might be better if we have no agreement," he said. "I invite you to reflect."

During the pause, officials from the United States and other delegations were dispatched one by one to try to persuade the Chinese to change their minds. While the shouting was going on inside the hall, officials outside were revising their predictions about the chances for a treaty.

"We knew the Americans had to have [emissions] trading, and we knew India and China were solid in opposing it," said Michael Williams, a U.N. spokesman at the conference. "Maybe they would have walked away from the brink eventually, but at the time no one knew."

The compromise Estrada eventually crafted allowed the principle of emissions trading to remain intact but left key details about the program undecided until the next round of climate talks in Argentina. Estrada read the compromise text to the delegates and then quickly declared the debate over with a stroke of his gavel, taking advantage of conference rules that allows the chairman to judge when a consensus has been reached.

"If it weren't for Estrada the deal would have never gone through," said Peter Debriene, a program officer for the World Wildlife Fund.

The compromise on emissions trading was the last of the major pieces of the Kyoto accord to fall into place, but it did not end the discord at the conference. At 6 a.m., just four hours before the summit ended, the talks nearly collapsed again because of a small proposed change in treaty language that would have effectively prevented trading programs from being implemented.

The attempted revision, introduced at a time when bleary eyed negotiators had just witnessed a second sunrise without sleep, was nearly overlooked. But David Doniger, a counsel to the Environmental Protection Agency and a member of the U.S. delegation, understood the significance of the change.

Doniger quickly nudged other members of the U.S. delegation to their feet and then dashed across the conference hall, leaping over sleeping conferees, to alert some of Washington's allies. He found the New Zealand delegate asleep in his chair, his head resting in his palms.

"We got the flags up and everybody started to yell, Doniger said. "We told them, `If you don't fix this, we're not signing.' "

Afterward, the delegates closely scrutinized each new line until the gavel sounded and the delegates filed out of the building, exhausted but amazed at what had been accomplished under such trying conditions.

"This was a good day to write a treaty," Doniger quipped afterward, "but not a day for any of us to operate heavy machinery."

Staff writer Helen Dewar contributed to this report from Washington.