WASHINGTON -- The United States has asked that climate negotiations on implementing the Kyoto agreement, scheduled to resume in May, be postponed until July, the State Department said Wednesday.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that in the coming months the Bush administration will undertake ``a thorough look at the U.S. policy on climate change'' and needs the extra time.
``Failure to reach agreement last month at The Hague does indicate that all parties will benefit from some additional time to review their policies and consult with others,'' Boucher told reporters.
A decision on whether to postpone the resumption of negotiations will be up to Jan Pronk, chairman of The Hague conference. The negotiations are aimed at crafting rules to implement the climate accord reached in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997.
Two weeks of talks in November to try to work out a range of procedures and issues involving implementation of the agreement ended in failure amid sharp disagreement between the United States and European countries.
Pronk did not close out the conference, choosing instead to suspend it in hopes of still getting an agreement this year.
The U.S. negotiating team at The Hague pursued a series of proposals aimed at making compliance to the Kyoto accord more flexible and less costly. These included heavy reliance on greenhouse gas emission trading and the use of forests as carbon ``sinks'' in calculating compliance to the treaty's provisions.
Many of the European delegates argued that such mechanisms should be used sparingly and that the United States needed to commit to more programs aimed at reducing carbon emission at home.
The Kyoto accord, which has yet to be ratified by the U.S. Senate, calls for a 5.2 percent reduction of heat trapping carbon emissions by industrial countries from 1990 levels. The United States, the largest emitter of greenhouse emissions, would have to make cuts of 7.5 percent.
President Bush has said that he believes that a possible warming of the earth from manmade pollution -- mainly carbon dioxide releases from burning fossil fuels -- is a concern not to be ignored. But he opposes the timetable and emission reductions required by the Kyoto agreement.
In contrast, the Clinton administration strongly endorsed the Kyoto agreement as essential if climate change is to be addressed. Boucher said the United States continues to support the process, under way for three years now, for working out details of the agreement.
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