US climate talks continue despite flight chaos

The latest round of climate talks between the world's largest economies got underway yesterday, despite many key European negotiators being unable to attend due to the week-long flight restrictions caused by the Icelandic volcanic eruption.

A French embassy source told news agency AFP that European environment ministers and diplomats had been represented by their ambassadors in Washington at the two-day talks, which began yesterday.

The gathering of the 17-nation strong Major Economies Forum is the first meeting of the US-led group since the end of the Copenhagen climate change summit and follows hard on the heels of the recent UN talks in Bonn, where many of the divisions that characterised last year's climate change negotiations resurfaced.

The Washington meeting – which involves Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the UK, and US – is expected to try and find some degree of common ground between industrialised countries and emerging economies, which together account for more than 70 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

In an attempt to end the stand-off over greenhouse gas emission targets and the legal status of the Copenhagen Accord that was informally agreed last year, the US hosts distributed a questionnaire designed to identify areas of agreement between the world's largest economies.

"Clearly, there is still a gap between the views of the developing and developed world," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told AFP. "We're going to see if we can, through the course of this discussion, narrow that down. "

The questionnaire, which was leaked to news agency Reuters, has been signed by Michael Froman, deputy White House national security adviser, and US climate envoy Todd Stern.

It covers many of the key sticking points in the negotiations, while attempting to identify areas where progress can be delivered.

For example, the document starts by asking "what are the key issues that need to be addressed in order to have a successful outcome?" at the planned UN summit in Cancun, Mexico later this year.

It continues by asking "what is the outcome we are all seeking in Cancun? A set of decisions; a legally binding agreement; something else?"

It also requests an update from the world's largest economies on where they stand on the $10bn a year "fast-track" climate fund for developing nations, agreed at the Copenhagen summit and meant to run from 2010 to 2013.

Finally, it asks for information on countries' current "working assumption" about the Kyoto Protocol and how they plan to bridge the gap between the Copenhagen Accord and developing countries' insistence that the Kyoto Protocol is extended.