Climate talks resume but Copenhagen hopes fade

BARCELONA, Spain (AFP) - Climate talks in Barcelona resumed on Wednesday after an angry spat but negotiators admitted chances for sealing a hoped-for UN treaty on global warming by year's end had almost vanished.

"The impasse that we had yesterday seems to have been overcome and we are indeed content with that," said Anders Turesson, chief negotiator for Sweden, which holds the European Union (EU) presidency.

Work on one of the twin tracks under negotiation slammed to a halt on Tuesday after African countries staged a boycott.

The bloc of some 50 nations accused rich counterparts of backsliding on promises to curb man-made carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

It demanded they slash their pollution by at least 40 percent by 2020 over 1990 levels.

The squabble blocked talks among countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the cornerstone pact of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

It did not affect the other path of the UNFCCC negotiations, which includes the United States, the big Kyoto holdout.

Under a behind-the-scenes deal, delegates agreed to devote more time to scrutinising emissions cuts in a panel under the Kyoto track.

"Work has resumed fully in the contact group," said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping of Sudan, for the Group of 77 bloc of developing countries.

"We are guardedly optimistic, and indeed a degree of focus (on emissions reductions) is something we can record we have started to witness, and that's a very important indication."

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer told AFP the problem "has been temporarily settled."

He cautioned, though: "Unless we see some substantial movement from industrial countries on targets and finance, the problem will remain the same today as it was yesterday."

The twin-track process was launched in Bali in 2007 with the goal of concluding a post-2012 treaty among the UNFCCC's 192 parties at a December 7-18 showdown in Copenhagen.

But negotiations have been hamstrung over how to apportion emissions curbs between rich countries and developing giants.

Another headache is how to muster hundreds of billions of dollars to wean poor countries off carbon-intensive technology and strengthen their defences against climate change.

Artur Runge-Metzger, the European Commission's chief negotiator, said there was still only a "fragmented" view as to what countries were offering in these extremely complex issues.

"We will probably only have the full picture in the last days of Copenhagen, maybe even only during the last night... the (emission) numbers and the financial figures are probably, politically, the hardest part of the entire deal," he said.

Runge-Metzger insisted the EU "will still be pushing to come to a legally binding, or let's say a fully-fledged, treaty.

"But we hear more and more voices, including some of our political leaders, who say maybe time has run out and we need to look for something as a kind of a framework agreement which will allow for immediate action after Copenhagen, and then side by side you can continue to talk on the fully-fledged treaty and you can conclude that in the next year.

"I think these things that are being discussed openly at the present point in time," he said.

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said in Washington on Tuesday it was "obvious" that a "full-fledged binding treaty, Kyoto-type" could not be completed in Copenhagen.

He hoped for a framework agreement at Copenhagen that would then be fleshed out in later negotiations, but warned against a protracted process akin to the stalled Doha round of global trade liberalization talks.

Di-Aping, at a press conference, heaped scorn on any "political" deal that was devoid of legal teeth.

Developing countries had a well-founded suspicion about rich countries, he said.

"Tell me of any politician who delivers on his political manifesto," he asked. "Is it (British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown? Is it (Australian Prime Minister) Kevin Rudd?"

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