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Germany will host an extra session of UN climate talks in
April, but it is too early to say if the world will agree
a new treaty this year after falling short at a summit in
Copenhagen in December, Denmark said.
"The negotiations are picking up speed again after Copenhagen,"
Danish Climate and Energy Minister Lykke Friis, who presides
over the UN negotiations, told Reuters.
She said that 11 representatives of key nations decided at
a one-day meeting at the headquarters of the Bonn-based UN
Climate Change Secretariat to add an extra session of senior
officials from 194 nations in the Germany city from April
9-11.
"There was a positive and constructive atmosphere and all
parties were eager to move forward with the negotiations,"
she said of the first formal meeting since Copenhagen.
Until now, the calendar had been limited to a session of
officials in Bonn from May 31 - June 11 and ministerial talks
in Cancun, Mexico from November 29 - December 10. That was
a sharp slowdown from the five preparatory talks last year
before Copenhagen.
Friis said she was unsure if UN talks would end this year
with a new UN treaty to combat global warming and succeed
the existing Kyoto Protocol. "We are working for an agreement
in Cancun, but it's too early to say," she said.
Last year, many nations had hoped that the Copenhagen summit
would agree a legally binding treaty to slow rising emissions
of greenhouse gases blamed by the UN's panel of climate experts
for floods, droughts, mudslides, heatwaves and rising seas.
The summit ended with the non-binding Copenhagen Accord,
which seeks to limit a rise in temperatures to less than 2°C(3.6°F)
above pre-industrial times. It also promised $10 billion a
year in aid from 2010-12, rising to $100 billion a year from
2020.
The April meeting, of senior government officials, would
be preceded by one-day preparatory talks among key groups
of nations. The April talks would also decide if more UN meetings
were needed before Cancun.
Many nations have become gloomy about Mexico, partly because
US carbon-capping legislation seems stalled in the Senate.
President Barack Obama wants to cut US emissions by 17 percent
from 2005 levels by 2020 - or 4 percent below 1990 levels.
In Nusa Dua, Indonesia, the head of the UN Environment Programme
said developing nations could be able to apply within three
months for some of the $30 billion in climate aid promised
by rich nations for 2010-12 under the Copenhagen Accord.
Rules for disbusing aid are unclear in the Accord and Achim
Steiner said that one developing nation recently asked him
if there was a phone number to ring to ask about the cash.
"If, in three months' time, there still isn't a phone number,
then I expect that part of the accord to be in trouble - but
I expect there to be one," he said in an interview on the
sidelines of a major UN environment conference in Nusa Dua,
on the Indonesian island of Bali.
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