Climate pact process stumbles as countries bicker

Less than six months after the world agreed to craft a new climate pact by 2015, negotiations stumbled in a crucial preparatory phase Friday as rich and poor countries butted heads. As horns locked over who will lead negotiations towards a post-2020 deal to roll back Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions, the United States and Europe accused other participants of obstructing progress at an 11-day meet in Bonn. "There is a kind of division in the room, a small group holding up what the rest of the room does," European Commission chief climate negotiator Arthur Runge Metzger told journalists on the concluding day. "We will have to do more convincing with that group of like-minded countries," which included China, he said. "We were disappointed and frustrated that discussions at this meeting focused largely on procedural issues," added US negotiator Jonathan Pershing. Some parties were attempting to "renegotiate agreements we have already reached," he added, refusing to name names. On Thursday, China rejected accusations by Western delegates that it was holding up progress, insisting it was the United States, Europe and other rich states seeking to "evade legally binding commitments". These countries, Chinese negotiator Su Wei told AFP, wanted to shift the focus away from already existing emission targets to as yet undefined commitments under the so-called Durban Platform agreed in South Africa in December. Countries agreed in Durban to draft a new climate deal within four years to bind all nations to emission cuts, not just developed states as is the case now. But efforts to kickstart the Durban process floundered in Bonn, with a clear divide between developed and developing nations on apportioning responsibility for curbing global warming. Fast-growing countries like China insist the West, which has been polluting more for longer, should shoulder more of the mitigation burden. UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said progress on setting a workplan for the ADP, the body that will lead the negotiations for the new deal, had been complicated as "all parties needed reassurances from each other". Talks, meanwhile, to elect a chairman for the ADP broke down on Friday, as conference chairwoman Sandea de Wet warned delegates that "the window of opportunity is very slowly closing down on us." China and its allies want India to chair the ADP, on the grounds that it is the Asia-Pacific bloc's turn to steer a subsidiary body under the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC). The other candidates are Norway and the Caribbean state of Trinidad and Tobago. "This is a sad state of affairs," South African climate ambassador Nozipho Joyce Mxakato-Diseko told delegates as she announced that for the first time since the UNFCCC was created 20 years ago, a lack of consensus may force an election to be held. "All parties have confirmed to me they do not want to go this way, it is not in the culture of this structure, consensus is the norm," she said. Last-ditch negotiations to avoid a secret ballot were under way Friday afternoon.