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INTERVIEW-UN: work on climate pacts to start despite wrangling

by Reuters
Thursday, 3 March 2011 09:31 GMT

By Risa Maeda

TOKYO, March 3 (Reuters) - Work on recent climate agreements, including a new green fund, will start next month despite wrangling over the future of the Kyoto Protocol, a top U.N. official said on Thursday.

Christiana Figueres, the head of the U.N. climate change secretariat, said the Green Climate Fund as well as the whole work agenda for this year's U.N. climate talks will be discussed at a ministerial meeting hosted by Mexico in March.

Uncertainty has been growing over the future of the Kyoto Protocol, the first legally binding treaty to cut greenhouse gases as Japan, Russia and Canada insist they will not extend emission cuts.

Although most governments, including those of developing nations, support the extension the three holdouts want all top emitters, led by China and the United States, to agree a new treaty beyond 2012, when Kyoto's first period ends.

Figueres, in Japan for an informal meeting of climate envoys from about 30 governments, shrugged off the possibility that the main U.N. climate forum of all countries in Bangkok in April will be overshadowed by disagreements about Kyoto.

Kyoto is not a new issue although governments will have to address and make "some decision" by a year-end climate summit in Durban, South Africa, she said.

"There are many ideas that have been considered to find a middle of the way path forward... They have to come to some decision in Durban," she said in an interview with Reuters. (Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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