Skirmish over China and India at Bali talks

A 190-Nation climate meeting in Bali began a hunt for a new global deal...

A 190-Nation climate meeting in Bali began a hunt for a new global deal to fight global warming by 2009 on Tuesday with skirmishing about how far China and India should curb surging greenhouse gas emissions.

“The conference got off to a very encouraging start,” said Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat of the December 3-14 meeting of 10,000 participants that will try to launch talks on a climate pact to succeed the UN’s Kyoto Protocol.

After an opening day dominated by ceremony, governments set up a “special group”to look at options for launching two years of talks meant to bind the United States and developing nations led by China and India more firmly into fighting climate change.

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De Boer said the group of senior officials would report back to 130 environment ministers, who will arrive next week at the talks in a luxury Indonesian beach resort.

The meeting also agreed to study ways to do more to transfer clean technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines, to developing nations.

The Bali talks seek a mandate to widen Kyoto to all nations beyond 2012. Of the top world’s top five emitters Kyoto only cuts Japan’s greenhouse gases, with the US outside the pact, and China, India exempt and Russia facing easy caps.

But there was controversy about how to share out the burden. Environmentalists accused Kyoto nations Japan and Canada of asking China and India to do too much.

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Japan on Monday called on all parties to “effectively participate and will contribute substantially.” A Japanese official said it was “essential”that China and India were involved.

China and India say that rich nations must take on far deeper cuts in emissions and that they cannot take on caps yet because they need to burn more fossil fuels to end poverty.