Failure not an option in late push for Summit deal

JOHANNESBURG - South African President Thabo Mbeki welcomed world leaders to the Earth Summit in Johannesburg last night with a call to settle final differences over an action plan.

Negotiations among environment ministers failed to clinch a deal on a sweeping United Nations programme to ease poverty and clean up the environment.

Officials sounded hopeful that the United States and European Union would manage to bridge the differences over promoting "green" energy at more talks last night although a secondary problem concerning language about sex, human rights and abortion had cropped up.

"The matter rests with all of us gathered here," Mbeki told dozens of heads of state and government.

"The progress [the ministers] have achieved ... should enable us to take the necessary decisions that will make it possible for us to emerge from this summit with a concrete plan of action.

"Nothing whatsoever can justify any failure on our part to respond to this expectation."

Negotiators agreed a blueprint to combat Aids, dwindling fish stocks, global warming, deforestation and the loss of species as part of an overriding goal of halving poverty by 2015.

But the US and Opec oil-exporting states have been objecting to EU demands that the action plan should include firm targets for switching from oil and gas to new renewable energy sources like wind, solar and hydro power in world energy use.

Official sources on both sides sounded quietly confident, however, that the problem was not insurmountable.

European leaders like German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were in Mbeki's audience and expected to press strongly for green initiatives worldwide.

Schroeder has called for a major global effort to hold down the use of fossil fuels blamed for global warming. That has become a hot topic in Europe since devastating floods last month were blamed by some on man-made changes in weather patterns.

The EU and some developing nations like Brazil are leading calls to agree to diversify supplies, partly to combat global warming blamed on fossil fuels such as oil and coal.

The EU has pushed to raise the share of renewables to 15 per cent by 2010 from 14 per cent in 2000.

Green groups remained hopeful that a new global target for clean energy would be reached, especially since many key European nations have been strong supporters of limiting "greenhouse gases" blamed for disrupting the climate.

"The break in the talks is a good thing for energy," said Steve Sawyer, climate policy director at Greenpeace.

Blair called for more ambitious goals to curb climate change, saying that sceptics like the US could be won over by a global drive to develop clean fuel technology.

"It's a great opportunity for Blair, Schroeder and [Brazilian President Fernando Henrique] Cardoso to bring a real renewable energy target back in," said WWF's Jennifer Morgan.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is keen to clinch a deal to protect the whole process of global cooperation.

Annan began his speech by saying nothing symbolised the threat to the planet better than the looming famine blighting 13 million southern Africans, half of them in Zimbabwe.

Other speakers today will include French President Jacques Chirac, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Mugabe and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell to make a speech tomorrow after most other leaders have left.

Yesterday delegates agreed to halve the proportion of people without basic sanitation by 2015, or 2.4 billion people of a global population of six billion.

Sanitation was a goal long opposed by Washington, which had said it would not go beyond UN millennium goals that included halving the number of people without access to clean water.

Many environmentalists say the overall plan, which will not be legally binding, lacks teeth to reach the goal of halving poverty by 2015 while fostering economic growth that does not poison the planet as Western industrialisation did.

Meanwhile, Australia said it would invest A$7.2 million ($8.4 million) to help Pacific islands battle rising seas, despite its refusal to ratify the the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

Fijian Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase called for partnerships to help Pacific islands that could be swamped by rising seas if the worst predictions about global warming prove true.

- AGENCIES

Johannesburg Summit