BUSH CLIMATE MEETING MUST STAY WITHIN UN FOLD: OFFICIAL

By AFP

The UN's top climate change official said Thursday it was crucial for George W. Bush to keep efforts to curb global warming within a UN framework, as the US president prepared to host a meeting of the world's top carbon polluters.

"It is important that the United States is bringing together the group of major emitters to talk about the kind of reductions they can commit to," said Yvo de Boer, head of the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"But what is even more important is the US indication that ultimately their intention is to bring this back to the UN process," he said in an interview with AFP.

Bush has invited 15 nations and the European Union -- together accounting for 80 percent of greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere -- to a conference in Washington next month. De Boer will lead a delegation from the UN.

When the US president announced the meeting and unveiled a surprise plan in June for tackling global warming through technology, many European nations and environmental groups expressed concern that the US initiative would conflict with the existing UN process.

Thirty-six industrial nations which ratified the UN-brokered Kyoto Protocol have pledged to reduce their global warming emissions to five percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

The treaty also created a carbon trading market, and allows rich nations to offset their carbon reduction commitments by funding initiatives in developing countries.

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