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NUSA DUA (Indonesia) - EUROPEAN countries and green groups put on a brave face to mask their anger and disappointment on Saturday, after the US thwarted their main goals for tackling dangerous climate change.
The accord in Bali launched a two-year round of negotiations for the most ambitious treaty ever attempted for reining in greenhouse gases, the carbon pollution from fossil fuels damaging Earth's climate system.

But under US pressure, the deal dodged the goal of halving these emissions by 2050 or of embracing a commitment by industrialised economies to slash their own emissions by 2020 to help set the horse-trading in motion.

Both had been set down by the European Union (EU), supported by developing countries, as a prerequisite for negotiations that would be bold and put the whip to rich countries historically to blame for global warming.

French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said that the key decision was that negotiations were now set in motion, and there remained two years to haggle over pledges before the process winds up in Denmark in 2009.

The future 'is Copenhagen, it's not Bali,' he said.

His deputy minister, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, acknowledged that the framework for negotiations 'is quite weak but ... still moves forward.'

She noted that the US, for the first time, had signed up to text on 'the comparability of efforts' of industrialised countries, a sign of its intentions of being a full-fledged member of the international climate club.

Green groups, though, accused the United States of gutting an agreement that would have ensured the negotiations got off to a flying start.

'What you've got is a situation where the overwhelming majority of countries are progressive, they're pushing for a deal, and the (US) administration was out on a wrecking mission,' said Hans Verolme of conservation group WWF.

'Yes, we're launching negotiations and they have an end date,' he said.

'What they don't have is a clear reference to the best available science that should inform these negotiations and that is because the (US) administration was baulking, baulking, baulking.' He and other activists said, however, that the process launched in Bali would provide a seat at the next table for President George W. Bush's successor.

'The Americans have actually climbed down on things that 12 months ago they fundamentally rejected,' said Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), a Brussels lobby group for the wind industry.

Previously, the US had refused to re-engage in global climate talks, set an end date for a future treaty or be included in a process essentially driven by the format of the Kyoto Protocol, rejected by Mr Bush, he said.

'So, on a procedural level, the Americans are being coaxed back into the fold. But they still have bedrock opposition to legally-binding obligations of emissions reduction.' Elliot Diringer, director of international strategies at the US environmental group, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said the Bali deal was 'the best possible under the circumstances.'

'Two years ago, governments could barely reach agreement on staging a dialogue. Here, there is agreement on a global accord in 2009.'

But, he cautioned, 'we shouldn't fool ourselves about how extraordinarily hard it's going to be to meet that goal.'

He said the Bush administration could easily block or slow progress in negotiations throughout 2008, 'and without US concessions, developing countries won't follow suit.' -- AFP


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