U.N. climate debate tries to kick-start new treaty

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly's first session devoted exclusively to climate change closed with nations worried about the devastating impact of global warming now and on future generations, although few countries altered their well-known positions.

Still Britain's ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry, said of the session, which ended on Thursday, "The world is actually motivated on the issue in a way it wasn't earlier.

"Go back to January," he said. "Nobody here was interested in climate change and all people were concerned about this week was climate change."

The meeting, which spilled into a third unscheduled day so nearly 100 nations could speak, was a preview of a summit that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for September 24, a day before the high-level annual Assembly session begins.

That session will be followed by U.N.-sponsored negotiations in December on the Indonesian island of Bali to see whether any progress can be made toward a new environmental treaty.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of carbon emissions expires in 2012, possibly leaving the world without global warming regulations. That pact requires 35 industrial nations to cut emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Both Jones Parry and Japan's director general for global issues, Koji Tsuruoka, said the negotiations toward another treaty would be protracted and that developing nations would have to be included, not just industrial countries.

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