Negotiators from 178 nations have reached a deal to salvage a treaty on fighting global warming following marathon talks that ended in Bonn today.
Tokyo won latitude toward reaching targets for cutting pollution under the rules agreed.
"Japan had the most leverage here," said Ms Jennifer Morgan, climate change campaign director for WWF."They got more than they lost."
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The pact calls for industrialised states to trim output of greenhouse gases to an average of 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Four days of high-level negotiations resulted in a broad package, but the final deal was reached only after round-the-clock talks and heavy shifts in positions by key parties.
Japanese delegates maintained throughout the talks that they wanted to reach a deal to cut carbon emissions. But fears that Tokyo would not move forward without the United States, which rejected the pact in March, appeared to strengthen its hand at the bargaining table.
Japan came away with a package that allows it to claim wide swathes of its forests and farms as carbon-storing sinks to offset against meeting its emissions reduction goals, as well as soft language on the legal framework that could hit states failing to meet their targets.
The United States stuck to its oft-stated script, limiting its role to already established international environment funds and issues it saw as precedent-setting for future treaties, although it did closely watch all topics up for debate.
But Washington did not succeed in persuading other states to alter proposals which give poor nations and small island states several seats on bodies that will monitor states' actions.
The conference could have amended the Kyoto Protocol in Bonn to give it full legal force, but it has decided to delay that amendment until the first meeting of the parties after the ratification, expected in 2002.
PA