Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi held the fate of the Kyoto global warming accord in his hands on Monday as Europe handed him an 11th-hour ultimatum to save the U.N. pact to curb greenhouse gases.
It's make or break in the next few hours," said Jan Pronk, the Dutch chairman of a meeting of U.N. environment ministers in Bonn after telling delegates that just one issue, on which Tokyo is hesitating, separated a successful compromise from failure. European officials, who had earlier endorsed the chairman's take it or leave it list of compromises on technical issues, said Canada was also still reluctant to back it fully. But the main hold-out was Japan and only Koizumi, due back in Tokyo from a Group of Eight summit in Genoa, could change that, they said.
"It's all down to Koizumi now," one European source said, spelling out what Pronk, exercising a diplomat's discretion, had couched in terms that avoided naming the countries involved.
Tokyo's consent has been crucial to bringing the accord into force since President Bush rejected in March the 1997 pact, saying its mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would hurt the economy of the world's biggest polluter.
Japanese delegates declined to comment beyond saying they were still unhappy with one element of the draft compromise deal. This was a passage on how the Kyoto treaty would be enforced, an issue known as "compliance" in negotiators' jargon.
EU ministers said they were happy with a provision that would provide penalties for countries that failed to meet emissions targets. But Japan favors a softer approach. Bureau Report