As more European leaders condemned President Bush's decision to abandon the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, the EU came under growing pressure yesterday to ratify the agreement without the US. A high-level EU delegation will travel to Washington on Monday to seek clarification of the US position.
But Belgium's Energy Minister, Mr Olivier Deleuze, said the EU would also hold talks with Russia, China, Japan and Iran to seek support for the protocol.
"We will do a tour of these countries that have a very important role in this affair and we will ask them if they perceive the American position in the same way as us and how they see a solution," he said.
In a speech to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, President Jacques Chirac of France said the US action was unacceptable. But the executive director of the UN Environment Programme, Mr Klaus Toepfer, said Washington's Uturn did not spell the end of the protocol.
"Of course this development is shocking. But we must not remain in a state of shock. Instead we must ask how we can solve this objective, global problem together. Climate change is there. And it is one of the most difficult problems facing humankind," he said.
The Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Yoshiro Mori, has written to Mr Bush urging him to change his mind.
In his letter, Mr Mori voiced strong concern about the impact of Mr Bush's decision on measures to combat global warming. He hoped the US would attend the next round of Kyoto treaty talks to be held in Bonn in July and agree to endorse the international pact.
Japan's three ruling coalition parties said they would send a joint delegation to Washington to try to persuade the Bush administration to ratify the treaty. "The United States has a great responsibility for future generations."
Some small island states in the Pacific Ocean also criticised the US move, saying global warming has triggered rising sea levels and severe storms and droughts.
But the Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, said yesterday he understood US concerns, saying Mr Bush was not wrong to want developing countries included in the pact. "What President Bush is concerned about, and it is an understandable concern, is you can't really have a comprehensive agreement unless you get the developing countries inside the tent."
White House officials said President Bush would hold talks with other countries to seek an alternative to the pact, which was one of the results of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit where world leaders identified climate change as a major global threat.
The developing countries have said they would be willing to limit emissions only at later stages, with developed nations leading the way, a view held by Mexico.
Patrick Smyth adds from Washington:
President Bush has vigorously defended his decision to repudiate CO 2 emission controls. "We will not do anything that harms our economy," Mr Bush told journalists, insisting that other countries pressing for international limits on emissions would have to understand that "first things first, are the people who live in America". But he pledged again to "work with our allies to reduce greenhouse gases."
Mr Bush also gave the first hint that the energy industry may not get it all its own way during his administration by implicitly admitting that he may not be able to persuade Congress to sanction controversial oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve. Supporters of drilling had hoped to incorporate approval in the Budget Bill that has just passed through the House. Their failure to do so makes Congressional approval far more difficult.
If he could not wring enough fuel out of the US he would look abroad to Canada and Mexico, he said. "It doesn't matter to me where the gas comes from in the long run, just so we get gas moving in the country."
Additional reporting: Reuters
