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Business News/ Politics / Climate talks to resume after African nations’ protest
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Climate talks to resume after African nations’ protest

Climate talks to resume after African nations’ protest

 Exchanging views: UN climate chief Yvo de Boer says the vast majority of countries want to see the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol. Bob Strong / Reuters Premium

Exchanging views: UN climate chief Yvo de Boer says the vast majority of countries want to see the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol. Bob Strong / Reuters

Copenhagen: African nations agreed to resume climate talks in Copenhagen on Monday after a half-day suspension, accusing rich countries of trying to kill the existing Kyoto Protocol.

“We’re going back," Pa Ousman Jarju from the delegation of Gambia, told Reuters after a meeting of the African group.

Exchanging views: UN climate chief Yvo de Boer says the vast majority of countries want to see the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol. Bob Strong / Reuters

The protest held up a session due to start at 1030 GMT, just four days before a summit of 110 leaders aims to agree on a United Nations (UN) pact to combat global warming.

Jarju said that the Danish hosts gave assurances that there would be more focus on African nations’ demands for an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the existing pact for curbing emissions of greenhouse gases.

Monday’s session of the 192-nation meeting was to seek ways to end deadlock on core issues as part of a sweeping new deal meant to limit global warming and rein in extreme weather patterns that scientists see intensifying in coming decades.

Australian climate minister Penny Wong accused the African nations of staging a “walkout" and said it was “not the time for procedural games" so close to the end of the 7-18 December meeting of more than 20,000 participants.

Click here to read Mint’s complete coverage of the Copenhagen Summit

The original outline of talks for Monday “means that we are going to accept the death of the only one legally binding instrument that exists now," said Kamel Djemouai, an Algerian official who heads the African group.

Other African delegates also said the rich wanted to “kill Kyoto".

Developing nations want to extend the Kyoto Protocol and work out a separate new deal for developing nations. But most rich nations want to merge the 1997 Kyoto Protocol into a new, single accord with obligations for all to fight global warming.

They favour a single track largely because the US, the No. 2 greenhouse gas emitter behind China, is outside Kyoto. The fear signing a new Kyoto while Washington slips away with a less strict regime with developing nations.

The UN said many nations backed the African view. “The vast majority of countries here want to see the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol," said Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat.

Danish minister Connie Hedegaard, presiding at the meeting, plans to appoint environment ministers to try to break the deadlock in key areas, such as the depth of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by developed nations by 2020, and cash to help the poor.

“If we carry on at this pace, we’re not going to get an agreement," British energy and climate minister Ed Miliband told the BBC.

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Published: 14 Dec 2009, 10:11 PM IST
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