SYDNEY, Australia (AP): Australia will seek to guide some of the world's biggest polluters to a new consensus on tackling climate change at next week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the country's leader said Monday.
Prime Minister John Howard, a former climate change skeptic who has steadfastly refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming, said he hopes to use the annual meeting of 21 APEC leadersto create a new approach to tackling the issue.
"The key task in Sydney is to give political direction to the shape of a future framework for climate change that is truly global," Howard told a meeting of business leaders in Sydney.
"We should strive to find agreement on principles for international action that genuinely address the problem, whilst allowing countries such as China and Indonesia to continue to grow and prosper," he added.
The prime minister, who is hosting the Sept. 8-9 summit, said he hoped APEC leaders would also go "beyond agreement on principles" to setting "a long-term aspirational goal" for reducing greenhousegas emissions.
Australia and the United States, two of the world's largest per capita producers of carbon dioxide, are the only developed countries that have refused to sign the Kyoto pact.(***)
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