HAMBURG, May 30: Asian countries, including rising global powerhouses China and India, reluctantly agreed to back European calls for a new climate change treaty by 2009 to limit greenhouse gases after the Kyoto Protocol expires.
Tuesday’s deal was a step forward for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s push for a climate deal at next week’s Group of Eight (G-8) summit. But differences remained at the end of the meeting of foreign ministers from the European Union (EU) and Asia over whether developing countries would agree to cut emissions.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who hosted the two-day talks in which 45 top diplomats participated, said everyone agreed on setting a 2009 deadline on a climate change pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012.
“We agreed there should be a follow-up regime to Kyoto,” Steinmeier said. “Secondly, negotiations will be started and...started seriously this year, and by 2009 they will have to be concluded.”
Germany, which holds the rotating EU presidency, was eager to use Asian backing to combat climate change to bring US President Bush to commit to measures to cut emissions of gases believed to cause global warming.
But Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, speaking on behalf of all 16 Asian nations at the talks, said the EU should not expect developing countries like China or India to share the same burden of binding cuts similar to those taken by richer nations. “We hope developed countries will ...take seriously concerns and needs of developing countries and honor their commitments to provide financial assistance and technology transfers,” Yang said.
Most Asian nations expressed misgivings over the European push to get them to back the 2009 deadline, said a spokesperson for Japan’s Foreign Minister.
But diplomats and officials said both sides agreed developing countries should not have to shoulder the same burden in cutting emissions as richer countries. The Kyoto Protocol exempted them, a major reason why the US rejected the pact.
