Copenhagen: The first draft treaty to
arrest climate change, issued after a week of intense
negotiations, today was a target of attack by developed
countries who dubbed the document as "flawed" for not imposing
obligations on emerging economies to check global warming.
The US went on to say that it was not ready to go into
a deal without the developing nations taking up real action.
The climate change talks appeared divided ahead of the
high-level segment that commences next week which could see
the environment ministers ramp up the negotiations.
India had also expressed unhappiness over the draft as
it mentioned a "time-frame" for peaking of emissions which it
said was unacceptable.
US envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern described the
text as "unbalanced."
"Most fundamentally, the United States is not going to
do a deal without major developing countries stepping up and
taking real action," Stern said.
Both the United States and the European Union stated
that the present draft was completely inadequate when it came
to mitigation actions by developing nations especially the
emerging economies including China and India.
The draft "inadequately reflected" the obligations for
mitigation by developing nations, senior US negotiator
Jonathan Pershing said, adding that "time was running out" and
parties would have to move expeditiously to fix the text.
PTI
First Published: Saturday, December 12, 2009, 21:05