U.S. says climate talks fail to make headway - Yahoo! News

U.S. says climate talks fail to make headway - Yahoo! News

The United States said on Wednesday U.N. climate talks were making less progress than hoped because of a rift over poorer nations' emission goals, and that other avenues might be needed to tackle climate change.

Negotiators from 177 governments are meeting this week in the north Chinese city of Tianjin trying to agree on the shape of the successor to the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the key U.N. treaty on fighting global warming, which expires in 2012.

"There is less agreement than one might have hoped to find at this stage," said Jonathan Pershing, the United States Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change and lead U.S. negotiator in Tianjin.

"It's going to require a lot of work to get to some significant outcome by the end of this week, which then leads us into a significant outcome in Cancun," he told reporters, referring to the main round of talks at the end of the year in Mexico.