U.S. EPA head says little on Kyoto alternative

Japan Policy & Politics, Sept 10, 2001

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 Kyodo

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Whitman failed to mention a U.S. alternative to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to curb global warming at a meeting with her Japanese counterpart on Thursday, Japanese government sources said.

In a meeting with visiting Japanese Environment Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, Whitman only said that President George W. Bush will make a final decision and she cannot say anything at this stage about the prospects of an alternative plan, the sources said.

Kawaguchi has made the visit to the United States in a bid to persuade the U.S. to return to the international pact which it withdrew from in the face of much international criticism in March.

Kawaguchi also held talks with other U.S. government officials and lawmakers and called for the U.S. to submit its alternative plan by the seventh session of the Conference of the Parties (COP7) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change scheduled to open in late October in Marrakech, Morocco.

The resumed COP6 in late July in Bonn managed to strike a deal on implementing the Kyoto pact, but failed to put the agreement into a legal form needed for ratification.

The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialized nations to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases between 2008 and 2012 by an average 5.2% from 1990 levels.