European and US negotiators may meet in Oslo next week in a bid to break the deadlock over the UN's global warming treaty, a senior French official said Friday.
Whether the Oslo meeting takes place would depend on a meeting of EU environment ministers in Brussels Monday and Tuesday, said the official, in France's environment ministry.
The talks come on the heels of the failure of November's UN conference in The Hague to complete the Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to limit emissions of "greenhouse" gases -- carbon dioxide and other gases.
These gases, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, are blamed for potentially disastrous climate change.
The talks foundered on differences between the United States and the European Union over how to calculate forests as a benefit that can soak up carbon pollution.
A further round of talks between experts including the EU, the US and other industrialized countries took place in Ottawa last week. Rather than a breakthrough, both the EU and the US accused each other of having shifted their negotiating positions, said the official.
If the talks went ahead, they would be on Wednesday evening and all of Thursday -- or all of Thursday and Friday morning -- to enable negotiators return home in time for the holiday break, said the official.
Agreed in the Japanese city of Kyoto three years ago, the protocol is a "framework" accord that sets down goals and the broad way to achieve them.
It was left to subsequent negotiations to give content to the agreement, but the details have proven dauntingly complex and vulnerable to national interests.
The Hague conference agreed to meet again within six months, probably in Bonn in late May or early June.
But the EU is keen to get some sort of agreement with the United States before January 20, President Bill Clinton's last day in office. His successor, George W. Bush, is a former oilman and avowed opponent of Kyoto.
Scientists say that if nothing is done to slow down the current output of greenhouse gases, the Earth's atmosphere could warm by up to six degrees Celsius (10.8 deg. Fahrenheit) over the next century.
That would be enough to shrink the polar icecaps and melt glaciers, and would probably cause an increase in the frequency and violence of extreme weather events such as storms, droughts and floods.
Kyoto will remain a dead letter until, after completion, it is ratified by a majority of polluting industrialized countries. The United States alone accounts for a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas output -- PARIS (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
