BRUSSELS: European Union leaders will decide only in October how much money they will give poor nations to help them combat climate change, a delay that environmentalists said Friday could jeopardize a global pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Leaders of the EU's 27 nations said in a draft statement Friday that the EU ``will contribute its fair share of international public support'' to help poor nations reduce carbon dioxide emissions and tackle problems linked to the warming climate.
But they did not seal a deal on giving developing countries at least euro100 billion ($139 billion) a year, saying they needed to see those countries put ``comprehensive low-carbon development strategies'' in place that would measure and report back on carbon savings.
Environmental campaigners said this delay endangered international efforts to strike a deal on reducing emissions at U.N. talks in Copenhagen in December.
"No action from the EU now leaves the road wide open for less ambitious countries like Japan and the U.S. to water down the deal," said Joris den Blanken of Greenpeace.
WWF said the EU's insistence that developing countries should describe in detail why they needed climate funding was ``a sure way to impede progress.'' It said the EU was toying with dangerous delaying tactics by leaving critical decisions to the 11th hour.
Some poor nations, and emerging economies like China, are reluctant to commit to strict emissions curbs, saying richer nations such as Britain, Germany and the US should do more because they have contributed more to global warming over the past two centuries.
The EU is one of the strongest forces pushing for a climate deal. EU leaders said Friday that they want an "ambitious and comprehensive agreement'' at Copenhagen but do not want to lay all their cards, or their funding promises, on the table ahead of the negotiations.
The EU has already vowed to reduce its carbon emissions by a fifth by 2020 and promised to go to 30 percent if other rich nations join it to try to keep climate warming under 2 degrees Celsius.
