U.S. aims to support U.N. on climate change - RiceBy Deborah Zabarenko and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S.-sponsored meeting of the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters aims to support the U.N. process on climate change, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday, but some participants and environmentalists were skeptical.
In opening the two-day session, Rice expressed hopes of combating global warming without stifling growing economies.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talks during an interview with Reuters in New York, September 24, 2007. The U.S.-sponsored meeting of major emitting countries is aimed at supporting and accelerating the U.N. process on climate change, Rice insisted on Thursday. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)"It is our hope that we can make progress toward that goal in this meeting ... and that in doing so we will support and accelerate the broader processes now under way in the U.N. framework convention," Rice said.
Rice stated the consistent U.S. position that individual nations should set their own goals to curb climate-warming emissions, especially carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and petroleum-fueled vehicles.
Critics, including chanting protesters gathered outside the State Department conference, questioned whether such national, voluntary targets would work.
"We appreciate the sentiments expressed by Secretary Rice, but the devil is always in the detail," South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk told Reuters.
"That is still the crux of the difference between the approach of the U.S. and the approach of the rest of the world," he said, referring to the split over national versus global targets for greenhouse gas emissions. "For us this meeting is obviously to determine if the U.S. is willing to change (its) approach on that issue."
Phil Clapp of the U.S. National Environmental Trust was openly skeptical: "We have heard all this before from the (Bush) administration and they continue to embrace voluntary measures under treaties that failed 15 years ago."
"A DISTRACTION, A SIDESHOW"
The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, ratified by more than 180 countries in 1992, including the United States, called for voluntary measures to reduce global warming emissions. When these proved ineffective, international negotiators framed the Kyoto Protocol which mandated caps on carbon dioxide emissions and envisioned a world carbon market.
The United States signed but never ratified the protocol and President George W. Bush rejected it in 2001, saying it unfairly exempts fast-growing economies like China and India while penalizing rich countries like the United States.
This meeting in Washington and an earlier one at the United Nations on Monday are preludes to a negotiating session in December in Bali, Indonesia, aimed at formulating a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The United Nations meeting Monday drew more than 80 heads of state and government to focus on the problem of global warming.
The Washington meeting drew ministers from the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters - including the United States and China.
By most counts, the United States is the No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide produced by coal-fired power plants and petroleum-fueled vehicles. But at least one study this year indicated that fast-developing China is now in the lead.
Other participants were the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa.
About 60 protesters, many of them from Greenpeace and other environmental groups, chanted anti-Bush administration slogans and held up placards outside the State Department while diplomatic security formed a line preventing them from getting into the building.
Chanting "Bush is a criminal," "Stop Global Warming Now" and "No war, no warming" some protesters staged a sit-in at the main diplomatic to the building.
Greenpeace campaigner Chris Miller said the U.S. conference was a waste of time and Bush should focus his energies instead on joining U.N. efforts to tackle global warming.
"We think this meeting is a distraction, a sideshow," he said. "What he (Bush) is proposing is wholly insufficient."
(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan and Sue Pleming)
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