Merkel urges binding UN climate deal

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged quick agreement on a binding UN climate pact yesterday even as boycotts held back both US and UN work on the deal.

Mrs Merkel, making the first address by a German leader to a joint session of the US Congress since Konrad Adenauer in 1957, said there was "no time to lose" on a pact meant to be agreed in Copenhagen at a UN conference on December 7-18.

"We need an agreement on one objective - global warming must not exceed two degrees Celsius," she said. "To achieve this, we need the readiness of all countries to accept internationally binding obligations," she said.

But work towards a new deal ran into obstacles in the US Senate and at UN negotiations this week in Barcelona, Spain, the last session before Copenhagen.

In Barcelona, African nations staged a day-long boycott of part of the 175-nation UN climate talks to demand far deeper 2020 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by rich countries.

"People in Africa are suffering now, people are dying now, when the developed countries are not willing to express... ambitious reductions," Kemal Djemouai, chair of the African group, said.

The African nations agreed to lift the boycott yesterday evening after winning promises that industrialised nations would spend more time in Barcelona discussing cuts in emissions. Disputes over emissions reductions are a main stumbling block to a Copenhagen deal.

In Washington, Senate Democrats on a key committee kicked off a debate on reducing US carbon dioxide pollution despite a boycott by Republicans who want to delay climate change legislation.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chairman Barbara Boxer began the session to discuss possible amendments to a climate change bill with all seven of the panel's Republican seats standing empty.

"We have worked hard to get to this day," Ms Boxer said, detailing months of work on a bill she hopes her committee will approve in coming weeks, probably with only Democratic votes. Full US legislation is unlikely before Copenhagen.

The US Bill seeks to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 per cent by 2020, from 2005 levels - a cut of about seven per cent below 1990 levels used as the benchmark for the Kyoto Protocol.

African nations want the rich to cut by at least 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, saying that their people are suffering most from disruptions to water and food supplies.

In London, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that a Copenhagen deal in December would be "a very important milestone". But he said it would not be a detailed legal text, reflecting a global scaling back of ambition for the meeting.

That view was echoed by the European Commission.