Obama Attends Climate Change Meeting in Singapore
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SINGAPORE (AP) -- President Barack Obama and nearly two dozen fellow leaders from Asia and Europe agreed Sunday that next month's much-anticipated international climate change meetings will be a way station -- not the end point -- in the difficult and so-far elusive search for a new worldwide treaty to tackle global warming.
The 192-nation climate conference beginning in three weeks in Copenhagen had originally been intended to produce a new global climate change treaty. More recently, it has become increasingly clear that wouldn't be the case. But the endorsement of that conclusion by Obama and fellow leaders at a hastily arranged breakfast meeting here on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit served to dampen any remaining expectations for the December summit.
"There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen which starts in 22 days," said Michael Froman, Obama's deputy national security adviser for international economic matters.
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The prime minister of Denmark, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the U.N.-sponsored climate conference's chairman, flew to Singapore to present a proposal to instead make the mission of the Copenhagen meeting a "politically binding" agreement, in hopes of keeping the process alive. A fully binding legal agreement would be pushed down the road, possibly for a second meeting in Mexico City, Froman said.
Obama backed the approach, cautioning the group not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, Froman said.
The two-year process of crafting a landmark new treaty has been marked by distrust between rich, developed nations like the U.S. and those in Europe and poorer developing nations such as India, Brazil and China.
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The developed nations hold that all countries must agree to legally binding targets to reduce heat-trapping gases. Developing countries say they can make reductions a goal but not a requirement, and want more money from wealthy nations to help them make the transition.
A major bill dealing with energy and climate, and backed by Obama, is bogged down in the U.S. Senate, giving the U.S. president little to show at the Copenhagen gathering.