(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-12-14 11:21

Pressure even has come from America's alley Australia, whose Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has urged Washington to "embrace" binding targets. The new Prime Minister handed on Wednesday the official document ratifying the Kyoto Protocol to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Earlier Thursday, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel confirmed that the EU Major Emitters will not attend Bush's Major Economies Meeting in Hawaii in January without substantive progress at the Bali Conference.

"No result in Bali means no Major Economies Meeting," said the top environment official of the European Union.

With deadline set for noon Friday for delegates to iron out differences, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer voiced concern about the pace of negotiations.

He said many of the outstanding issues taken into the high-level segment have been linked to each other, creating an "an all-or-nothing situation," and that if the work on a future agreement was not completed in time, then "the whole house of cards falls to pieces."

On the recurring question of whether emission reduction ranges would be included in the text on the future, Mr. de Boer acknowledged that the European Union and a number of G77 countries were in favor of including the 25 percent-40 percent range in the text, while others such as the United States had made clear their opposition to this idea. Any inclusion of numbers in the text, he added, would exceed his expectations for the conference.

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