New Un Climate Proposals Unveiled

The stalled UN global warming meeting tried to find a way out of issues stopping adoption of an agreement on climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions by offering new draft proposals for debate.

But the new proposals kept mainly unchanged from a previous draft key parts of what had been the hurdles in negotiations that have brought the conference close to breakdown in its last hours.

They were a section involving commitments by the developing world to the global warming fight and the use of emission trading under which countries could sell pollution under their agreed levels.

Developed countries, particularly the United States, fought for the preservation of language on voluntary participation of developing countries in the reduction of greenhouse gases.

Developing countries wanted the paragraph out because they believe they should not take part in reductions at this time while their economies are still growing.

The developing world also wanted reference to emission trading removed because of fears that the developed world could use it to simply buy its way out of the fight.

Developing country opposition to these provisions was one of the main reasons that the talks went into an extra day, spilling into Thursday morning.

There were changes from Tuesdays draft.

The new proposal said the cuts should involve six, not three gases, while deeper overall cuts in gases were set for a different time period.

The proposal said greenhouse gas emissions should be cut by six percent on 1990 levels by 2008-12, versus the earlier plan of five percent by 2006-10.

The text made no mention of individual cuts by nations involved, unlike the previous draft which had spelled out the reductions, leaving these to the final stages of the drawn-out talks.

The proposals drawn up by meeting chairman Raul Estrada need to be debated, with possible changes, before they can be adopted.

((Kyoto press centre, +81-75 724-0624 tokyo.newsroom zreuters.com))