China's top Doha negotiator attacks lack of climate control progress

China's top climate negotiator has taken a swipe at the Doha climate talks one week into negotiations, complaining of a lack of progress and underscoring concerns that no concrete deals to slow global warming will be reached this year.

A total of 190 nations are in the talks, and ministers began arriving at the weekend for the high-level portion of the meeting, which will begin tomorrow.

But after a week of lower-level meetings, Su Wei, China's chief climate negotiator, was less than optimistic. China News Service quoted him as saying: "It is not clear whether any breakthrough can be achieved."

Little progress has been made on so-called core issues, such as arrangements for a US$100 billion climate fund to help poor countries cut emissions and adapt to the effects of global warming, as well as an extension of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set binding obligations on industrialised countries to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends on December 31, and a second commitment period has not been set.

"Whether the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol should last for five years or eight years, and how to ensure it will be implemented immediately from January 1 have yet to be negotiated," Su said.

The Kyoto Protocol is the only existing global treaty that binds most industrialised nations on their emissions of greenhouse gases, while sparing China, India and other large, emerging economies, which have caught up quickly in carbon emissions.