Rich and poor criticise U.N. climate treaty drafts
* Draft climate text under fire at Bonn talks
* Still accepted as basis for negotiations
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
BONN, Germany, June 1 (Reuters) - Rich and poor nations criticised a first draft text of a new United Nations climate treaty on Monday, but accepted it as a starting point for six months of arduous negotiations.
"We...have some dismay about the way it has been structured," Jonathan Pershing, head of the U.S. delegation at the June 1-12 talks among 180 nations in Bonn, said of a 53-page draft outlining ideas from all countries.
"This text should contain more balance," said Ibrahim Mirghani Ibrahim of Sudan, speaking on behalf of developing nations including China and India.
Still, he said "this session marks a turning point" because formal negotiating texts are on the table for the first time, outlining all ideas for inclusion in a new U.N. climate treaty meant to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.
Those include suggestions that rich nations set aside up to 2 percent of their gross national product to help the poor cope wtih global warming, and suggestions by rich nations about how the poor can slow their rising emissions of greenhouse gases.
European Union delegates said the text was accepted as the basis for negotiations in coming months on a treaty that will curb use of fossil fuels and succeed the U.N.'s existing Kyoto Protocol.
"The fact that it's been criticised from all sides probably means it's balanced overall," one delegate said.
The United States, for instance, has said that the text is weighted towards the interests of developing nations and lacks a preamble saying that all countries are going to have to step up actions against global warming.
Developing nations fault the text for spending more pages on their possible actions than on cuts in emissions by the rich.
The chair of the talks said that the meeting marked a new phase in talks, launched in Bali in December 2007.
"We must enter into full negotiating mode," chair Michael Zammit Cutajar, a Maltese national, told the session. "You, the parties, must start to get to grips with specifics."
The texts are full of blanks to be filled in about the commitments of all sides.
Artur Runge-Metzger, head of the EU Commission delegation, said the text did not say enough about low-carbon development for poor nations. "We didn't see that properly reflected in the text," he said.
Outside the meeting, protesters from environmental group Greenpeace, dressed as snowmen, trees, polar bears and camels, warned delegates of the risks of climate change.
"Water me!" read a sign on a demonstrator dressed as a giant cactus. Inside the hall, protesters hung a banner saying: "Survival is not negotiable."
Developing nations say that desertification, floods, rising sea levels and heatwaves will be most damaging to the poor, and want rich nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
That is far deeper than levels under discussion by rich governments.
A key U.S. Congressional panel last week approved a plan that would cut U.S. emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 -- equal to 4 percent below 1990 levels -- and by 83 percent by 2050.
The EU has promised a unilateral cut of 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and a 30 percent reduction if other countries join in. Runge-Metzger said that EU emissions fell for the third year in a row in 2007, showing cuts were possible.
-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: blogs.reuters.com/environment/ (Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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