Pacific Rim countries talk about climate change but set modest goals

SYDNEY, Australia (AP): Pacific Rim nations began negotiating a contested declaration on climate change Tuesday as host Australia said that all sides agreed the meeting should provide a new direction on global warming.

Officials and experts were attempting to bridge differences between richer members and developing countries over targets for energy use and whether the trade-oriented group - the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum - should deal with global warming at all, officials said.

"Some member economies think that APEC is not the forum to deal with climate change," said David Lin, a senior Taiwan Foreign Ministry official.

Drafting was moving into high gear before leaders of the 21-member APEC gathered for their annual summit this weekend. U.S. President George W. Bush was due to arrive late Tuesday. Chinese President Hu Jintao headed to Canberra, the capital, after visiting mining companies in western Australia that are fueling China'seconomic boom.

Their anticipated arrival started the first of an expected series of protests by groups outraged APEC's pro-business agenda and by the Iraq war - and Australia's backing of the U.S. in it.

In a downtown Sydney park, about two dozen supporters of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China as an evil cult, handed out flyers and held up a banner that read, "APEC Nations: Please Act to Stop the Persecution of Falun Gong in China."

This year's focus on climate change has moved APEC, which operates by consensus and normally sticks to incremental economic issues, has moved the group into strangely controversial terrain.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard, as host, decided to put climate change on the agenda in part because he is trying to capture the high ground on environmental issues ahead of elections which must take place by early next year.

Howard was circumspect Tuesday about what kind of an agreement the leaders would reach on climate change, given the disagreements.

He said, however, that "reasonable progress" was being made.

"There's broad goodwill and there's broad belief that this conference should provide a way forward on this issue," he said. "I don't want to at this stage claim any more than that."

Beyond Howard's political fortunes, the climate change debate at APEC could potentially shape future negotiations over the issue.

APEC includes the three major greenhouse gas emitters, the U.S., China and Russia, which previously have disagreed over how to deal with global warming.

Bush is convening a meeting on the issue in Washington later this month and in December a U.N. meeting will be held in Indonesia to forge a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Unlike the Kyoto agreement, which required industrialized nations to limit emissions of greenhouse gases to set targets, Howard's proposal seeks a broader, more vague goal of reducing energy use, officials who have seen the document said.

He has also included initiatives on energy technology and forestry management that he hopes APEC leaders will endorse. China, too, brought out a separate forestry initiative that it has proposedadding to Howard's proposal, officials said.