Now in the second and final week of talks in Bangkok on a climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, tensions were running high as negotiators representing 180 countries attempt to whittle down the exhaustive 200-page document before Copenhagen.

"The reason why we are not making progress is the lack of political will by Annex 1 (industrialized) countries," said Yu Qingrai, China's special representative on climate talks, the Guardian reports. "There is a concerted effort to fundamentally sabotage the Kyoto Protocol."

Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese chair of the G77, which represents 130 developing nations at the talks, said "feelings are running high" among G77 states. "The intention of developed countries is clearly to kill the protocol," he said.

Most developing nations want to keep the same framework of 1997 Kyoto, which expires in 2012. Under that arrangement, developing countries wouldn't be required to make binding commitments on cutting their greenhouse gas emissions. But 37 wealthy nations would have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

As time winds down before the Copenhagen meetings, poor countries are complaining that rich nations seem to be on a path to carve out a new agreement that forces them to cut their emissions, while rich nations will get away with minimal cuts.

The United States, Japan and Australia have offered a number of proposals in Bangkok, moving away from internationally binding emissions cuts. Instead, individual countries would pledge their own cuts without binding timetables and targets.

"The United States wants only to have a national target without binding it to a global treaty. It appears to have won over many other developed countries," said Martin Khor, the director of the South Center, a think tank of poor countries based in Geneva, the Guardian reports.

Yu said the proposals would lead to the termination of the Kyoto Protocol and all it stands for. "They are introducing new rules, new formats. That's not the way to conduct negotiations," he said.

"We are faithful to the Kyoto approach, its system, in its entirety," Yu told reporters. "We believe the different pieces must be kept together. It is a holistic system with commitments, with instruments, with compliance systems. We cannot pick and choose."

While developed nations have yet to come up with a figure on what their emission cuts should be, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proposes emission cuts of 25 percent to 40 percent for wealthy nations by 2020 compared with 1990 levels. Developing countries, however, think the aggregate cut should be at least 40 percent.

earlier related report
Climate: China accuses rich nations of 'changing the rules'
Bangkok (AFP) Oct 5 - China and a bloc of developing nations Monday accused rich countries of trying to kill off the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty in force that fights global warming.

"We now hear statements and actions that will lead to a termination of the Kyoto protocol and everything that it represents," Yu Qingtai, China's ambassador for climate change, said during a news conference.

Yu lashed out in Bangkok, where 180 nations are trying to lay the framework for a global climate deal in Copenhagen in December that would take over when the current provisions of the Kyoto Protocol run out in 2012.

"It's just like the final five minutes into a game in which one side is putting forward a set of new rules ... and expects the other side to agree.

"That is not a fair way of conducting negotiations," he told journalists.

The world's nations vowed nearly two years ago to hammer out a new global agreement by the end of 2009 to slash drastically the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that drive global warming.

Emerging giants such as China and developing countries say the new agreement should strengthen Kyoto, under which 37 highly industrialised nations took on hard commitments for cutting carbon dioxide pollution between 2008 and 2012.

The United States signed the treaty in 1992 but never ratified it, and thus was exempt from its provisions.

In Bangkok, several nations -- notably the United States, Australia and Japan -- have floated proposals calling for an approach in which each country would make its own national commitments.

These would be measurable and verifiable, but outside any kind of internationally enforceable compliance regime.

Rich nations have suggested that poorer countries, which had no Kyoto obligations, could make efforts to curb carbon dioxide output in keeping with their level of development under such a scheme.

China was not alone in calling instead for beefing up Kyoto, which could exist along with whatever other measures might be adopted at the climate conference in Copenhagen.

At the same press conference, Sudan's Lumumba D'Aping, who heads the so-called "G77 plus China" bloc, called on developed countries to say clearly that they were not out to "kill the Kyoto Protocol."

In a UNFCCC session in June, Indian climate negotiator Shyam Saran also warned against attempts to undermine the existing treaty.

"We are not negotiating a new Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol does not cease to exist in 2012 and will remain valid and in effect until such time as the state parties decide to abrogate it or amend it or decide to replace it with another legal instrument," he said.

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