Breakthrough Unlikely At Montreal's Post-Kyoto Talks Late This Year

[hatrack]

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A major Montreal meeting charged with starting to draft a successor to the Kyoto climate change accord is unlikely to produce a breakthrough, a senior Canadian official said on Monday.

The conference, which runs from November 28 to December 9, will try to find common ground between those countries that signed on to Kyoto and those that did not, including the United States, China, India and Australia. "We don't expect outcomes on this at Montreal because this is the first discussion of the post-Kyoto regime," the official told a briefing. "But what we want to do is build bridges between developing countries and industrial countries -- including the industrial countries that are not members of Kyoto -- as to the kind of regime which might exist in the future."

Kyoto, designed to curb emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, formally expires in 2012 and the task of forging a new treaty will be immense. Many of the 152 signatories have had trouble meeting their targets. The United States, the world's biggest polluter, walked away from Kyoto in 2001, saying it would harm economic growth. It also complained the accord does not cover developing countries such as China and India.

"We want this to be something which is remembered as the start of serious negotiations with the countries that are not part of Kyoto," said the Canadian official. "I don't think we're going to have another Kyoto in which not all industrial countries and no developing countries establish targets for themselves ... If you were to negotiate Kyoto today you would want China in it."

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