UN climate head: US stand a `nonstarter’

NEW YORK – The U.N. climate chief on Monday welcomed statements by Bush administration officials that the United States would accept a binding international commitment to reduce global-warming gases. But he said their insistence that China and other developing nations do the same “is not realistic.”

“If it’s a quid pro quo, then it’s a nonstarter,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the Bonn-based U.N. climate secretariat.


The United States is the only major industrial nation to reject the U.N. climate treaty’s Kyoto Protocol, which requires 37 nations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by an average 5 percent by 2012.

Instead, the Bush administration has called for voluntary reductions by U.S. industry and generally has discussed only national-level commitments, via legislation on vehicle fuel efficiency, for example, rather than accept the idea of international treaty obligations.

AP