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USA wins

USA  wins  the us has its way once again as an upcoming climate change conference scheduled for May-June 2001 has been postponed. Jan Pronk, president of the climate change conference held in November 2000 and environment minister of the Netherlands, announced that the negotiations would now resume sometime in the middle of June or late July 2001.

A statement released by the un Framework Convention on Climate Change (unfccc) secretariat says that the decision to postpone was taken in consultation with "governments who wanted sufficient time to prepare adequately for the conference.' Although the statement does not name these governments, it is no secret that the us , along with Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, wanted to delay the talks. The us was seeking a postponement so that the new Bush administration could get its act together and prepare for the ministerial level talks. The audacious demand by the us suggests that the superpower's domestic problems should decide the timing of international events. But should international negotiations be postponed because a particular country needs time to put its new administration in place?

The us has, more often than not, used its distinction of being the single biggest producer of greenhouse gases (ghgs) to blackmail other countries into meeting its demands. Most countries in their desperation to ensure us participation in the climate change debate give in to its tactics. "Our immediate challenge is to maintain political engagement and to safeguard the many substantive advances achieved at The Hague,' defended Jan Pronk, who is directing the talks till a new president is selected in Morocco in October 2001. "I hope that the shock of our inability to reach an agreement last November will spur all governments to further efforts to find the middle ground of compromise and consensus,' he said.

This postponement has come at a time when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc), in its latest assessment report, has predicted an increase of about 6

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