Pre-Earth Summit Negotiations Making Progress: Officials

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, August 26, 2002

Pre-Earth Summit Negotiations Making Progress: Officials

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Informal negotiations on the Plan of Implementation which is expected to be adopted at the end of the Earth Summit have made good progress, senior organizers of the summit said Sunday in Johannesburg.

"There are still differences but we can't expect them to finish overnight, they still have time," said South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Zuma at a press conference.

She said that when the summit opens on Monday, there will be only a short opening session, then government delegates will go into serious work.

The Plan of Implementation is the most important document of the UN conference. The more than 70-page plan outlines initiatives that countries worldwide will take to pursue sustainable development.

The differences that still remain include setting specific targets of action, increasing official development aid to developing countries, reducing distorted trade and agriculture subsidies, governance and eco-labeling.

Some developed countries, especially the United States, are reluctant to make concrete commitments to increasing their aid to developing countries while many developing countries fear that such issues as eco-labeling would be used as trade barriers to prevent their products from entering developed markets.

"More than 75 percent of the documents have been agreed since the Bali PreCon in May, and we can see there is generally a positive mood towards resolving the remaining difference," said Nitin Desai, UN under-secretary general and chief of the summit's secretariat.

Zuma said that when delegates negotiated the documents in Bali, Indonesia, they were not in a hurry, because they though they still had time.

But now, the summit is the last chance. What can not be concluded here will never be concluded," she said.

The minister said that she was optimistic about the outcomes of negotiations, because all participants to the summit are in Johannesburg to seek solutions instead of differences.

Everybody is expecting the summit to be a success. As long as all countries show strong political will, the summit can be a success, she said.

The Earth Summit, officially known as World Summit on Sustainable Development, is a follow-up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that the summit will focus on five key areas: water and sanitation, energy health, agricultural productivity and biodiversity.

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