Germans prepare to fight US on climate

BERLIN -- Germany and some of its partners in the Group of 8 leading industrial economies are bracing for a major conflict with the United States at a summit meeting next week, with the Bush administration expected to block a declaration on global warming, European officials said during the weekend.

With few days to go before the G-8 summit in the north German resort of Heiligendamm, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will lead the event, is rallying support for a cause she has made one of her priorities since Germany took over the presidencies of the European Union and the G-8 in January.

In a diplomatic offensive, the chancellery and the Foreign Ministry will hold meetings this week with leading American and Asian officials, particularly the Japanese. Japan, which has begun to take the lead in trying to reduce climate warming in the region, is a member of the G-8, along with Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the United States. The summit takes place June 6 to 8.

Merkel will try to rescue the talks by seeking a compromise that will not undermine her goal of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases aimed at limiting warming of the environment. She also wants the next UN conference on climate change, scheduled to take place in Bali in December, to start negotiating a follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The United States has opposed both proposals.

Merkel has won support from Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. But the United States "has serious, fundamental concerns about this draft statement," according to a leaked US document cited by Greenpeace.

In particular, the United States, which did not ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, said it did not want to be tied down to targets designed to reduce carbon emissions or raise overall energy efficiency by 20 percent by 2020. The protocol calls on the 35 participating countries to cut their carbon emissions by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

Merkel has already tried to dampen expectations about any breakthrough on the global warming issue during a speech last week to Parliament. She said she did not know "whether we will succeed in Heiligendamm."

The German environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, a Social Democrat, criticized the US policy during a newspaper interview published on the weekend. "It is going to be difficult to achieve success" at the G-8 meeting, he said.

Still, in an attempt to influence American public opinion, Merkel will hold talks with the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, tomorrow in Berlin in which climate change will be one of the main issues.

Pelosi, who recently established a House select committee on energy and the environment, said she wanted to find "common ground" over energy with the Bush administration.

Pelosi, making her first trip to Europe since her election, said she wanted "to keep the door completely open to working with the president on the issue of energy independence and global warming," according to the Associated Press.

The Europeans have great hope that the Democrats in Congress will be much more aggressive toward climate warming. Some leading Republican governors, led by Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, have already forged ahead, ignoring the Bush administration and introducing their own strict environmental policies.

The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, representing the European Union, was scheduled to lead a meeting today with Asian foreign ministers in the German port city of Hamburg. The two-day talks will focus on climate change, energy, closer economic ties, and North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

German officials acknowledged that the issue of climate change would be controversial at the Hamburg meeting. China and India, which will be attending the EU-Asian meeting, did not participate in the Kyoto Protocol. Since then, their economies have surged ahead, while raising immense concern that such growth is harming the environment.

China and India have been reluctant to embrace more stringent environmental policies, fearing that they would be too costly or would slow growth. The Bush administration has consistently argued that because China and India did not participate in guidelines of the Kyoto Protocol, the United States was not prepared to do so.

Japan, however, has spoken out strongly for a more rigorous policy to contain global warming. Prime Minister Abe said last week that he wanted to start negotiations, preferably in December, for a new framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol. He also proposed cutting world greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. Abe will take over the presidency of the G-8 next January.