Brussels, 27/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - Margot Wallström, European Commissioner for the Environment, expressed disappointment that negotiations in The Hague on climate change had been suspended on Saturday failing an agreement on detailed rules allowing the Kyoto Protocol to become operational. She nonetheless said she was determined to continue work with all the parties to reach an agreement in 2001 during the second part of the COP6 (sixth conference of the parties to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change), confident that this extra time would be used to advantage to reach global consensus allowing the Protocol to be ratified. In a press release, published on Sunday by the Commission, Margot Wallström declared: "The example of the Cartagena Protocol to the UN convention on biodiversity (Ed.: a protocol establishing rules for giving a framework to the international trade of live genetically modified organisms), on which agreement was reached only at the second attempt, shows that a temporary setback can lead to a better result in the end. We of course would have preferred a deal on the rules for the Kyoto Protocol now, but (…) in the end we simply ran out of time to resolve all the issues. The resumption of COP6 will give us the second chance we need".
EUROPE recalls that negotiations in The Hague mainly stumbled over the refusal by the European Union and the developing countries (the "group of 77") to agree, as the Americans and their allies wanted (Canada, Australia, Norway, New Zealand and Japan) that forests and agricultural land described as "carbon sinks" should, in some way, be accounted for in the realisation of aims for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions with reduction by as much of the effective efforts provided by the different industrialised countries to contribute to the fight against global warming