UN warns time is tight for Kyoto successor

US and China at loggerheads again as latest round of talks kicks off in Bangkok

The latest round of UN talks on the successor to the Kyoto agreement kicked off in Bangkok yesterday with delegates from more than 160 countries warned they had a "very short time frame" to reach an agreement.

Speaking at the opening of the conference, the UN's top climate change official Yvo de Boer warned that if the timeline agreed at last year's Bali conference is to be adhered to, a draft agreement will need to be in place before the final meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009.

"This leaves us with around one and a half years – a very short time frame within which to complete negotiations on one of the most complex international agreements that history has ever seen," he said before adding that he remained "confident that it can be done if the work is broken down into manageable, bite-sized chunks".

No major decisions are expected from this week's talks, which are intended to focus on establishing a timetable for the next round of negotiations ahead of the Copenhagen conference.

However, despite the procedural nature of the talks, tensions between different parties still emerged with the US reportedly rejecting a Chinese proposal that developed countries should contribute a percentage of their gross domestic product to help mitigate the effects of climate change.

The Chinese proposal that developed nations invest 0.5 per cent of their GDP each year to help developing nations fight climate change was among 26 submissions published this month on the website of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

However, according to Bloomberg reports, US climate change negotiator Harlan Watson said that while the proposal was an "interesting suggestion", it would not be supported by the US.