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EU Says Support Growing for Climate Deal Without U.S.
The European Union is gaining support from Russia, Asia and the developing world for pushing ahead with a 1997 deal on combating global warming that the United States has rejected, EU officials said on Monday.
A delegation from the 15-country European bloc is in Japan on the last leg of a diplomatic tour to urge world powers to stick to the deal on cutting "greenhouse gases" that the White House threw out last month.
Russia and China have said they want to press ahead with the deal, and talks with Iran -- current chair of the G77 group of developing countries -- were encouraging, an EU official told Reuters.
"The tour will be a success if all of them confirm they want to continue to negotiate within the framework of the Kyoto protocol," Henning Arp, a senior European Commission official, said.
The deal, named after the Japanese town in which it was agreed in 1997, commits industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of five percent of 1990 levels by 2012.
The United States rejected the deal on the grounds that it would hurt the U.S. economy and was unfair because developing countries, including China and India, did not have to cut their growing emissions.
Speaking at a news conference in Beijing on Monday, the environment minister of Sweden -- holder of the rotating EU presidency -- said China wanted to press ahead with Kyoto.
"We have been very much reassured that they (China) really want to be part of this process," Kjell Larsson said.
Russia, which under Kyoto has to stabilize its emissions at 1990 levels, has also given its support, Arp said.
"They are critical of the United States and disappointed by Bush's decision," he said. "We still have to work with (Russia) on some of the technical details".
To come into force, the deal must be ratified by a minimum of 55 of the signatories, representing at least 55 percent of 1990 carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions -- theoretically possible without the United States which emitted around 25 percent of man-made CO2 in 1990.
The EU reiterated on Monday that it wanted to bring the United States back within the Kyoto framework if possible.
"We have not yet abandoned all hope of seeing the Americans coming back on board," EU Commission spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori told a news briefing.
But the Commission said the EU would not renegotiate the Kyoto targets to accommodate the United States, despite comments by Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson and Commission President Romano Prodi that parts of the deal were still open for discussion.
"If certain parts of the agreement prevented the United States from ratifying it, we should negotiate about those parts rather than bury the entire agreement," the EU leaders wrote in a Swedish newspaper on Saturday.
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