Officials downbeat at world climate conference in Germany

May 4, 2010, 17:44 GMT

   Berlin - A summit this year on cutting greenhouse gas emissions will again fail to agree on a global warming treaty, but it might make some progress on the issues, officials predicted Tuesday on the last day of climate talks in Bonn, Germany.

Some 40 nations attended the talks, hosted by Mexico and Germany in advance of the November summit at Cancun, the Mexican resort.

Connie Hedegaard, the European Union (EU) commissioner covering climate issues, said she detected no change from the United States and China, the two nations which locked horns at the summit in Copenhagen last December.

'I didn't hear any new message from them,' she said.

Yvo de Boer, the UN diplomat from the Netherlands who is soon to give up his job as executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said, 'Cancun won't be a failure,' but conceded it would not produce a ready-to-sign treaty.

But he predicted 'substantial results' on the way to a 'functioning architecture' to fight global warming.

The international community has been talking about world emissions quotas and financial aid to the poor nations to encourage them to use low-carbon technologies.

   De Boer called on environment ministers to get involved and not leave the job to negotiators. He said the talks in the Petersberg luxury hotel on the outskirts of Bonn had 'shown the powerful desire of ministers to revive the formal negotiations process.'

Hedegaard, who is Danish, said she had found a 'constructive atmosphere' at the Bonn talks.

German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen pledged at the talks that Berlin would donate poor nations 350 million euros (465 million dollars) for forest conservation and 850 million euros for technology conversion by 2012.

Both would help to reduce the carbon overload in the air. Roettgen aides said Norway and France would pay for activity to save rain forests. Ministers said practical action now would help slow down global warming.