Climate talks in Bali head for compromise

By Adhityani Arga

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - U.N. talks in Bali headed for a deal on Saturday to launch negotiations on a global pact to fight climate change after the European Union and the United States settled a row over 2020 greenhouse gas curbs.

But there were lingering disputes about how strongly a final "roadmap" for talks on a broader treaty to succeed the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol should demand action by China, India and poorer nations to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

"This is a compromise. We can live with this," German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters after a late-night session among about 20 nations reached a draft deal that would be put to all 189 delegations to discuss at 7:00 p.m. EST.

The December 3-14 talks had been bogged down by a row between the United States, which opposes a guideline that rich countries should cut emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and the European Union, which favored the target.

The compromise, reached after days of acrimony at a beach resort on the Indonesian island, simply relegated the range to a footnote from a more prominent position in the preamble.

"Deep cuts in global emissions will be required" to avoid dangerous climate change, the preamble says.

The United States, the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases and the only industrialized nation not party to Kyoto, said it was satisfied by the compromise.

"We can live with the preamble," U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson told Reuters.

Washington opposed mention of firm 2020 guidelines for cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, saying it would prejudge the outcome of negotiations on a new treaty meant to slow ever more droughts, heatwaves, storms and rising seas.

KYOTO SUCCESSOR

Most nations favor starting two years of negotiations ending with a broad new pact in 2009 to succeed Kyoto, which obliges 37 industrialized nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

The United Nations says a new deal must be in place by the end of 2009 to give parliaments time to ratify and to reassure carbon markets and investors looking beyond 2012.

In a sign of tensions over the talks, well past their Friday deadline, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will make an unscheduled return to the conference on Saturday morning at 0240 GMT. He left Bali for a trip to East Timor on Friday.

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said the discussion of the plenary session from 7:00 p.m. EST could flush out lingering disputes.

U.N. officials said one section of text still undecided was how far developing nations should be required to make "actions" or less demanding "contributions" to fight global warming.