Climate negotiators eye informal consultations to advance U.N. talks+

TOKYO, March 2 Kyodo -
Climate negotiators from around 30 nations and international organizations
agreed during a two-day meeting in Tokyo through Tuesday that informal
consultations among countries could hold the key to breaking a deadlock in
formal U.N. negotiations to craft a new global framework to combat climate
change beyond 2012, a Japanese official said.
Working-level officials from countries including China, India, Mexico, South
Africa and the United States as well as the European Union agreed on ''the need
to explore various ways and means to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness
of the discussions'' under the U.N. process, according to the summary issued by
Japanese and Brazilian co-chairs of the Tokyo meeting.
They also expressed the view that ''informal consultations among parties could
complement, and make a substantive contribution to the success of the U.N.
negotiations'' and recognized that such informal consultations ''should be
inclusive and transparent and are not alternatives to the U.N. process.''
The last U.N. conference in Copenhagen in December failed to adopt a major
accord brokered by 26 key players. The U.N. conference merely ''took note of''
the nonbinding political agreement, due to opposition from some countries that
complained about the closed-door drafting process.
The Copenhagen Accord calls on developed countries to set respective greenhouse
gas emissions cut targets for 2020 and for developing countries to take action
to mitigate climate change.
So far, more than 100 countries have expressed their support for the accord and
the countries endorsing the pact are responsible for more than 80 percent of
total global greenhouse gas emissions.
The official said countries differ on how to deal with the Copenhagen Accord,
with some calling for incorporating various factors of the accord in separate
texts worked out by formal U.N. working groups and others maintaining that
future negotiations should build upon the pact, which is ''comprehensive'' and
cannot be split into pieces.
The accord came out after hours of backroom maneuvering by world leaders.
Global climate change talks are aimed at establishing a new framework after the
first emissions-reduction commitment period for developed countries under the
1997 Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. The Kyoto pact does not cover mandatory
emissions cuts by China and the United States, the world's two biggest
greenhouse gas emitters.
==Kyodo