Climate talks go into extra time

The fate of the Kyoto climate treaty hung in the balance on Saturday after talks to save it went into extra time amid accusations of organisational chaos and attempts to “poison” a deal.

The two-week UN conference, originally due to end on Friday, now looks likely to last well into Saturday night and possibly Sunday.

“The more this drags on, the more likely we are to lose momentum,” said one official, explaining there may not be enough time left to salvage the Kyoto protocol, the world’s only treaty legally obliging wealthy countries to curb their carbon emissions.

Its main provisions expire in one year, making the Durban meeting the last chance to prevent the treaty deteriorating into irrelevance.

“It’s impossible to call,” said another senior delegate, adding the prospect of deferring a decision to an extraordinary meeting in Bonn next year was “a real option”.

“The calculation a lot of people are making is whether they can get a better deal in Bonn than in Durban,” he said. “We are trying to outmanoeuvre those who are trying to poison a deal.”

Some ministers have already left. Others have been forced to change bookings and drive six hours to Johannesburg to catch connecting flights.

South Africa’s foreign ministry, whose minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, is president of the conference, denied there was a problem.

“We are in control, there’s no need to panic,” said Clayson Monyela, a foreign ministry spokesman.

The Kyoto treaty, which binds around 40 wealthy countries to commitments on emissions, and efforts to create a new more comprehensive pact that would include all nations, are central to the debate dividing the biggest players at the conference.

A coalition of developing countries have rallied behind the European Union, which almost alone among industrialised countries says it will sign up to a second phase of the Kyoto treaty.

But the EU insists it will only do this if all other countries agree to a “road map” to a new, legally binding global pact to share the burden of reducing emissions, to be adopted by 2015 and enter force no later than 2020.

China and the US, the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters respectively, have long blocked progress in the talks because each has been loathe to agree to a legally enforceable pact.

But according to EU officials, the US was showing signs of supporting a draft text issued early on Saturday morning that calls for a “legal instrument applicable to all parties” that would be adopted by the end of 2015. China did not express open opposition, these officials said.

However, to the dismay of some delegations, another draft text purporting to have the support of the EU and US and large emerging economies such as China, was then circulated. But in a sign of the confusion and fraught nature of the discussions, it was unclear who drew up the text with delegates saying nobody had claimed it.

“It’s been totally watered down,” said one EU official, denying the text was official. “This is something someone has put out to make everything crash.”

Chris Huhne, UK climate secretary, said it appeared the text had emerged after the South African presidency had held further talks with “some of the countries that are less keen on high ambition” than the EU. He said he doubted it was a deliberate attempt to sabotage the talks, adding the EU was ready to keep talking for as long as it took to agree a deal.

Earlier, in tense closed meetings through the night, Indian’s environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, lashed out at officials from Canada, which has already said it will not sign up for a second round of commitments to cut emissions under the Kyoto pact. India has been blamed by many countries for holding up the talks.

“I was astonished and disturbed by the comments of my colleague from Canada who was pointing at us as to why we are against the road map,” Ms Natarajan said in a statement.

She added she was disturbed to see that the Kyoto protocol “negotiated just 14 years ago is now being junked in a cavalier manner”. “Countries which had signed and ratified it are walking away without even a polite goodbye, and yet pointing at others,” she said in a statement.

Still, Karl Hood, the foreign minister of Grenada, which chairs an alliance of small island states at the conference, said a deal was still possible.

“It’s very interesting I think, it could go anywhere,” he said.