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PARIS - German Chancellor Angela Merkel faces one of the most daunting challenges of her career this week when she chairs a Group of Eight summit where European distrust of the United States on climate change will run deep.
The meeting, starting Wednesday night NZT at the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm, gathers the leaders of the world's eight most powerful nations - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States, plus the European Union's executive commission.
Their three-day get-together behind fortress-like security has plenty of potential for political clashes, ranging from trade disputes between Russia and the EU to President George W. Bush's plan to deploy part of the US anti-missile shield in Eastern Europe, a plan blasted by critics as a provocative return to the Cold War arms race.
But none offers such possibilities for an ugly bust-up as global warming.
For the past six years, Europe, the world's most environmentally sensitive continent, has seethed with anger as Bush has questioned the greenhouse-gas effect, abandoned the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol for cutting carbon emissions and pushed an agenda for voluntary curbs that experts deride as woolly and unworkable.
Frustrations are now at boiling point. In April, on the heels of warnings about climate change by the UN's top scientific authority, the EU vowed to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 as compared with 1990 levels. It has offered to go to 30 per cent if other major polluters follow suit.
The goal: to kickstart talks, due to take place in Bali this December, that will decide the future of Kyoto after it runs out in 2012. The post-2012 treaty has to deliver much deeper, faster cuts than its present format and the deal has to be wrapped up quickly in order to be ratified and take effect on schedule.
But the Kyoto negotiations are difficult: developing countries, big polluters in their own right, must be weaned off fossil fuels without hurting their hard-won prosperity. And a link must be found between the Kyoto countries and the big holdout, the US.
With Kyoto's future in the balance, and facing isolation at the G8 where Merkel has been lobbying for a communique with the goal of a 50 per cent global cut in greenhouse gases by 2050 and maximum warming of 2C over pre-industrial levels, Bush has dropped a bombshell.
His plan is for the US and 14 other big emitters to set by the end of 2008 a "long-term global goal" for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
Bush has not spelt out the size of the cuts, when they would take effect or how they would be implemented.
There is no mention of legally binding emissions targets, which is the heart of the Kyoto process. Nor has Bush said whether the plan is offered as an alternative to Kyoto or as a means of building a bridge between it and the US - a discreet way of bringing the world's biggest polluter back into the climate debate.
European governments have generally greeted Bush's plan with enthusiasm, portraying it at least as an encouraging sign that he at last acknowledges global warming requires long-term action.
But many diplomats and climate experts see it as vacuous and some suspect it to be a ploy to wreck Kyoto by division, confusion and delay.
German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel was cautious, saying Bush's proposals could be either "a position change or a smokescreen".
"It's progress that the American President cannot ignore the issue of climate change. But the EU, and the G8 as well, cannot be satisfied with launching a process that would produce only vague, non-binding agreements between 10 or 15 countries. The US needs to be brought into the international process, with binding targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions."
EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said: "The declaration basically restates the US classic line on climate change - no mandatory reductions, no carbon trading and vaguely expressed objectives.
"The US approach has proven to be ineffective in reducing emissions."
A European diplomat, who will be at Heiligendamm, said Bush "has totally ignored the existing framework for negotiation" while Thomas Downing, director of a British think-tank, the Stockholm Environment Institute, said: "There is no mention of sanctions, of legally binding targets.
"It conflicts directly with the existing climate policy process ... and could result in further conflict and chaos in international negotiations."
Among green groups, Friends of the Earth say Bush has attempted to "derail" the UN process on climate change while Greenpeace describes it as a "late-night mugging" of Kyoto.
The heads of the five biggest emerging countries (Brazil, China, India, Nigeria and South Africa) have also been invited to Heiligendamm and their opinions could be important.
For them, Bush's plan is appealing, as it would not put them under too much pressure to cut their emissions.
This is especially seductive for China, which is already the world's No 2 polluter and set to outstrip the US within the next few years.
On the downside, Bush's plan would not guarantee them access to clean technology or funds to help them cope with the impact of climate change. Both exist, however, under Kyoto.
It all leaves Merkel with an extraordinary balancing act. If she insists on her tough communique, she risks isolating and outraging Bush. But if she backs down and delivers the typical G8 fudge she will be badly wounded at home.
Merkel has made climate protection a keystone of Germany's tenure of the G8 and its presidency of the EU, which runs until June 30.
"One of the customs at G8 summits is that the other participants grant the host a success on their big issue," the Financial Times Deutschland said.
"The fact that Bush has not kept to this is an affront and he's made Merkel's defeat even worse."
Merkel's spokesman, Ulrich Wilhelm, said it was too early to predict the summit outcome. "I think we can say at this stage that it's going to be tough, that we face intense discussions."
Merkel is not only under pressure on global warming.
Heading a left-right coalition, she is being fiercely criticised from the left about the cost of staging the rich nations' summit and about the extraordinary security measures that have been imposed. Tens of thousands of protesters, many of them from the long-established anti-capitalist movement in Germany, have been setting up tented camps on the fenced perimeter of the Heiligendamm no-go area. Police battled about 2000 protesters at Rostock yesterday. About 146 police officers were injured.
The authorities have mustered 16,000 police, introduced temporary controls at national borders with other EU countries, declared a no-fly zone over Heiligendamm and even erected an underwater barrier in front of the beachfront hotel where the summit will take place in order to prevent underwater craft from approaching the venue. The cost has been put at ¬12.5 million ($25 million).
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Who's going to the G8?
The leaders of the seven largest industrial countries - the United States, Japan, Canada, Britain, France, Italy and Germany, which used to be known as the Group of Seven, or G7 - plus Russia, which joined in 1997, after the collapse of communism. The European Commission President also attends the annual gathering - this year's, the 33rd, will be the first for the new French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Japanese Prime Minister, Shintaro Abe. It will also be the last for British Prime Minister Tony Blair - one reason, it is said, why he delayed his departure until late June.
When and where is it being held?
From late Wednesday (NZ time) to Friday this week, in the Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm, a resort on Germany's Baltic coast. Since the 2001 Genoa gathering became a battleground, and the September 11 attacks highlighted the terrorism threat, the summit has been held in more remote, easier-to-guard, locations. The only two roads to Germany's oldest seaside resort (developed in 1793 by the Duke of Mecklenburg) have already been closed. Angry people need to be kept at bay, including eco-warriors, white-overalled Italian anarchists and violent direct-action groups like the Black Bloc.
What's the main summit issue?
Germany, the host, with help from Britain and Japan, is pushing a robust five-point declaration on climate change after the Kyoto Treaty expires in 2012. It calls for measures to restrict global warming to no more than 2C, including a limit on carbon emissions and the buying and selling of carbon permits, known as "cap and trade". Other proposals, such as compensating citizens of poor countries with a low "carbon footprint", are more or less a done deal.
What else will they be talking about?
Blair will be pushing fellow leaders to live up to the commitments they made at the Gleneagles G8 two years ago. They agreed then that aid to Africa should be doubled by 2010, but a damning report last month said the G7 countries had increased aid by less than half of what would be needed to reach that target. Japan and Britain had done their part, lifting their contribution since 2004 by 62 per cent and 40 per cent respectively, but the report said Germany, France and Italy had "a particular crisis of credibility". When debt relief was excluded, Italian aid fell 30 per cent. Security and terrorism will also be discussed; the Afghanistan and Pakistan foreign ministers have been invited in an effort to reduce border tensions and curb the resurgence of the Taleban.
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