Some 150 countries began working in Bonn yesterday on a treaty to curb greenhouse gases as President Clinton was due to set out the US position in Washington in the run-up to a world environmental summit in Japan.
Mr Axel Wustenhagen, a spokesman for the United Nations, which is organising the December summit in Kyoto, said the two weeks of talks in Bonn would be the "eighth and final round of negotiations to strengthen the convention on climate change adopted in 1992" in Rio de Janeiro, at the first world environmental conference.
The 1,400 delegates are to come up with a proposal to put before the Kyoto summit. The summit will focus on how to fight the global warming caused by the greenhouse effect from gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide from cars and industry.
The Rio convention on climate change had called for member states to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 2000 back to the levels of 1990. But a conference in Berlin in 1995 said stronger measures should be taken and "mandated a working group to come up with an amendment or treaty for further commitments," Mr Wustenhagen said.
The US, Europe and Japan differ over what these should be. The European Union has proposed mandating a reduction of 15 per cent of the 1990 levels by 2010 but the US rejects this as too difficult. Japan has proposed a 5 per cent reduction from 2008 to 2012, with the possibility of further modifications, he said.
Mr Clinton said during a visit to Brazil last week that he was expecting international criticism on the climate issue, given Washington's lukewarm approach to the problem up to now.
As the world's major polluter, the US instead is suggesting merely reducing gas emissions in 2012 to those produced in 1990.