This was published 16 years ago
UN hosts global warming shindig, but Bush chooses just to eat and shun
By Steven Lee Myers and Washington
WHILE dozens of world leaders have gathered at the United Nations for talks on how to fight global warming, US President George Bush is skipping all events except for a final dinner.
His focus is on his own gathering of leaders in Washington this week, a meeting with the same stated goal — a reduction in the emissions blamed for climate change — but a fundamentally different idea of how to achieve it.
Mr Bush's aides say the parallel meeting does not compete with the UN process. They say Mr Bush hopes to persuade the nations that produce 90 per cent of the world's emissions to come to a consensus that would allow each, including the US, to set its own policy rather than having limits imposed by an international treaty.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon scheduled the UN forum to jump-start talks on how to replace the Kyoto Protocol, saying an agreement needs to be reached by 2009 to avoid a vacuum after it lapses.
Negotiators are to start on these talks in December in Bali.
This week's one-day gathering at the UN is meant to send a strong political message about the urgency of curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, Mr Ban says.
About 80 heads of state or government were expected to attend the meeting overnight, and 154 leaders and officials have signed up to speak. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is representing the US.
With rare exceptions, industrialised countries — the economies most under pressure to promise cuts — are represented by ministers, not by a prime minister or president.
Participants can speak at one of four parallel sessions: emissions curbs, adapting to climate change, clean technology and financing.
Mr Ban will close the talks with a summary of the main points and host a dinner of representatives from the world's biggest carbon-polluting economies.
It is not a negotiating session. This will come in Bali, where climate experts will try to craft a successor to the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.
Al Gore, the former US presidential candidate and maker of the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, will address the UN meeting.
It is the first of three US events on climate change this week that are likely to focus attention on whether Washington can make good on its pledge to take a leading role in curbing emissions.
Mr Bush's two-day meeting in Washington involves 15 countries, the UN and the European Union. The 15 countries are the major emitters of greenhouse gases.
Developing economies such as Indonesia, Brazil, China and India are also included.
Mr Bush will not speak at the Washington meeting on Thursday or Friday.
A third conference, the non-governmental Clinton Global Initiative, will convene in New York from tomorrow to Friday to discuss climate change with participants from business, academia, entertainment and environmental organisations.
Mr Bush has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that requires 36 industrial nations to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 5 per cent from 1990 levels by 2012.
He contends the accord unfairly burdens rich countries while exempting developing countries such as China and India and that it will cost US jobs.
NEW YORK TIMES, REUTERS