(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-13 19:57

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said he was worried the US-EU deadlock could derail the process and that a final "Bali roadmap" would contain an agreement to negotiate a new climate deal by 2009, but may not include specific targets for emission reductions.

"I'm very concerned about the pace of things," he said. "If we don't get wording on the future, then the whole house of cards falls to pieces."

The United States delegation said while it continues to reject inclusion of specific emission cut targets, it hopes eventually to reach an agreement that is "environmentally effective" and "economically sustainable."

But haggling over numbers now was counterproductive, said Jim Connaughton, the chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The United States is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the only major industrial country to have rejected Kyoto, which expires in 2012. It has been on the defensive since the conference kicked off on Dec. 3.

Pressure has come even from a one-time ally on climate, Australia, whose new prime minister urged Washington to "embrace" binding targets, and from former Vice President Al Gore, who won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for helping alert the world to the danger of climate change.

But US Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky, the head of the American delegation, told reporters that the conference was simply the start of negotiations, not the end.

"We don't have to resolve all these issues ... here in Bali," she said.

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