APEC meeting fizzles to inconclusive end
SYDNEY: The much-anticipated Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Sydney limped to a close Sunday, with a heavily compromised agreement on tackling climate change, few answers on how to push the global trade agenda forward and a huge security operation that ended up a laughing stock.
At the top of the agenda at this year's meeting of the Pacific Rim grouping - whose 21 member countries include the United States, China, Russia, Australia and Indonesia - were global warming and the stalemate that has paralyzed the Doha round of trade negotiations. On both fronts, there was only limited success.
"The world needs to slow, stop and then reverse the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions," the leaders said in a joint statement on the climate. But the agreement is vague, adopting nonbinding targets for slowing the increase in carbon emissions. They hope that by 2030, for every 1 percent of growth in national output, the increase in carbon emissions will be held to 0.75 percent.
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