KEY POINTS:
Any agreement at a United Nations climate change conference starting today in Indonesia would not make sense without the participation of the United States, the world's top greenhouse gas emitter, the UN climate chief said.
Delegates from 190 countries are meeting on Indonesia's Bali island for the largest-ever global warming conference - more than 10,000 people including Hollywood stars, former US Vice President Al Gore, fishermen and drought-stricken farmers.
World leaders will try to launch negotiations leading to a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Among the most contentious issues will be whether emission cuts should be mandatory or voluntary.
Yvo de Boer, general secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said that the US role "would be critical" in the discussions, and that delegates must come up with a roadmap that Washington embraces.
"To design a long-term response to climate change that does not include the world's largest emitter and the world's largest economy just would not make any sense," de Boer told reporters.
The US, which along with Australia refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, said ahead of the Bali talks that it was eager to launch negotiations - but it has been among industrialised nations leading a campaign against mandatory emission cuts.
But now the US may find itself isolated at the conference, since Australian Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd, whose party swept to power in general elections just one week ago, immediately put signing the Kyoto pact on top of his international agenda.
US President George W Bush, trying to fend off charges that his country is not doing enough, said a final Energy Department report showed that its emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, declined by 1.5 per cent last year while the country's economy grew.
The Kyoto pact required 36 industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gasses emitted by power plants and other industrial, agricultural and transportation sources.
A new agreement must be concluded within two years to give countries time to ratify it and to ensure a smooth, uninterrupted transition.
De Boer acknowledged that anyone who expects the Bali meeting to lead to specific targets or long-term solutions "will leave disappointed."
At best, analysts believe, Bali could lead to a two-year negotiation in which a new US administration, Europeans and other industrial nations commit to deepening blanket emissions cuts. They say major developing countries could agree to enshrine some policies - China's auto emission standards, for example - as international obligations.
- AP
