Developing countries attending the Kyoto Climate Change Summit have reaffirmed their determination that the world's industrialised nations must begin to make legally-binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
The UN's G-77 group, which represents 132 developing countries as well as China, said it had no intention of "signing a rain check", to curb its own ever-increasing emissions until it saw "concrete action" by the richer nations.
G-77 met the US delegation in Kyoto for the first time yesterday for formal talks, but found no common ground. The US is still insisting that the developing countries should be included in any deal to reduce emissions.
But G-77 has not changed its position, arguing that those who were responsible for causing climate change in the first place, since the Industrial Revolution, must lead the way in cutting back their harmful emissions of carbon dioxide.
The US has been staging some fancy diplomatic footwork at the conference, suggesting all sorts of measures to "buy" credits against its own prodigious emissions - for example, by aiding "clean development" in poorer countries.
It has also sought to portray itself as more environmentally conscious by proposing long-term cuts covering a "basket" of six greenhouse gases, as opposed to the three - carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxides - proposed by the EU.
However, this tactic has been viewed merely as a negotiating ploy to be dropped later as the talks grow more intense. It was finally ruled out yesterday by the Argentinian chairman of the negotiating committee as a "nonstarter".
Meanwhile, the EU faces the embarrassing prospect of having its credibility at the conference undermined if the European Council of Energy Ministers goes ahead on Monday with a package which would exclude "co-generation" in favour of promoting gas.
Co-generation produces electricity and heat simultaneously, with an average efficiency of 80 per cent - double what most fossil fuel power stations manage to achieve. For this reason, it formed part of the energy package proposed by the European Commission.
However, under pressure from the European gas industry, which wants to sell more gas, the Energy Council dropped co-generation from the deal to be finalised on Monday - causing obvious embarrassment to EU officials at the Kyoto summit.
Another issue to be negotiated at the climate change conference is "differentiation". This is the idea that different targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions would apply across the industrialised world, with the EU higher than the US.
This idea "popped up here as a surprise", according to Mr Pierre Gramegna, ambassador of Luxembourg, which currently holds the EU Presidency. He described it last night as a "risky game" which the EU "was very worried about", for competitive reasons.
He said the EU saw his role at the conference as playing broker between the widely divergent positions held by the US, Canada, Australia and Japan, on the one hand, and the G-77 group on the other in an attempt to reach a "satisfactory" deal.
