Climate talks stall as deadline nears

MARRAKECH, Morocco -- On a final day of talks, negotiators were deadlocked Friday over details of an international treaty to fight global warming -- the last hurdle to a book of binding rules on curbing the greenhouse gases suspected of causing Earth's temperature to rise.

But the United States, the world's biggest polluter, was watching from a distance, having decided in March to abandon the treaty and draw up its own action plan.

After reaching a deadlock Thursday night, delegation chairmen convened again Friday morning and were bargaining into the early hours of Saturday with hardly a break.

Government ministers shuffled in and out of small conference rooms arguing over what they called "crunch" issues. The Moroccan chairman playing host to the conference had said the two-week climate conference would not be extended beyond Friday.

The negotiators' objective was to complete rules for implementing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming. It calls on about 40 industrial countries to limit or reduce the emission of greenhouse gases -- primarily carbon dioxide from industry and cars -- blamed for raising the Earth's temperature.

The accord assigns each country a target and sets an average 5.2 percent emission reduction from 1990 levels to be achieved by 2012.

Approval of the text would likely clear the way for ratification by the required 55 countries, including those that emitted 55 percent of the polluting gases in 1990, the baseline year. Delegates said they hoped the treaty would come into force next year.

Carbon credits

In the final hours of the conference, Australia, Japan, Russia and Canada objected to five points on how market-based mechanisms would function.

The mechanisms are designed to help countries meet their targets by buying or selling carbon credits on an international financial market, or by reducing their quota by expanding forests and farmland that soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

More than 100 pages of legal text passed muster, but the five points consumed hours of debate and had delegates talking about the possible need for yet another conference early next year.

"All of us see the shortcomings in the package, but all of us see this as the only package that will fly," said Bagher Asadi, the Iranian negotiating on behalf of the bloc of developing countries. "You can never have a perfect agreement."

The U.S. position weighed heavily on the meeting. At the previous conference in Germany last July, all other countries decided to press ahead with the first compulsory global accord on the environment, despite the U.S. withdrawal. But some said the absence of the United States made it worthless.