Apec leaders douse hopes on climate pact
US President Barack Obama (L) talks with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during a bilateral meeting in Singapore yesterday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Summit. Photo: AFP
Asia-Pacific leaders yesterday buried hopes a key UN meeting next month would forge a binding pact to combat climate change, saying talks would drag on well past the Copenhagen meeting.
Instead they backed a face-saving proposal from Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen -- who jetted in for hastily arranged talks in Singapore -- aimed at forging a political statement of intent at the December meeting.
Complex negotiations towards a legally enforceable successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which expires in 2012, would then continue to work out differences between rich nations and developing countries including China.
At Sunday's talks attended by leaders including US President Barack Obama and China's Hu Jintao on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit, there was broad consensus this was the best option for the climate negotiations, officials said.
"There was an assessment by the leaders that it was unrealistic to expect a full, internationally legally-binding agreement to be negotiated between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days," US Deputy National Security Adviser Mike Froman told reporters.
Froman said Rasmussen told the meeting "he would seek to achieve a politically binding agreement that covered all the major elements of the negotiations" during the December 7-18 conference.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Mexican Prime Minister Felipe Calderon had convened the Singapore talks before the closing session of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit here.
In a final declaration, Apec called Sunday for "an ambitious outcome in Copenhagen" but dropped a proposal included in earlier drafts to slash their greenhouse gas emissions to half their 1990 levels by 2050.
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