Germany's Merkel urges binding UN climate deal

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged quick agreement on a binding U.N. climate pact on Tuesday even as boycotts held back both U.S. and U.N. work on the deal.

Merkel, making the first address by a German leader to a joint session of the U.S. Congress since Konrad Adenauer in 1957, said there was "no time to lose" on a pact meant to be agreed in Copenhagen at a U.N. conference on December 7-18.

"We need an agreement on one objective -- global warming must not exceed two degrees Celsius," she said. "To achieve this, we need the readiness of all countries to accept internationally binding obligations," she said.

But work toward a new deal ran into obstacles in the U.S. Senate and at U.N. negotiations November 2-6 in Barcelona, Spain, the last session before Copenhagen.

In Barcelona, African nations staged a day-long boycott of part of the 175-nation U.N. climate talks to demand far deeper 2020 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by rich countries.

"People in Africa are suffering now, people are dying now, when the developed countries are not willing to express ... ambitious reductions," Kemal Djemouai, chair of the African group, said.

The African nations agreed to lift the boycott on Tuesday evening after winning promises that industrialized nations would spend more time in Barcelona discussing cuts in emissions. Disputes over emissions reductions are a main stumbling block to a Copenhagen deal.

MILESTONE

In Washington, Senate Democrats on a key committee kicked off a debate on reducing U.S. carbon dioxide pollution despite a boycott by Republicans who want to delay climate change legislation.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chairman Barbara Boxer began the session to discuss possible amendments to a climate change bill with all seven of the panel's Republican seats standing empty.

"We have worked hard to get to this day," Boxer said, detailing months of work on a bill she hopes her committee will approve in coming weeks, probably with only Democratic votes. Full U.S. legislation is unlikely before Copenhagen.

The U.S. bill seeks to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels -- a cut of about 7 percent below 1990 levels used as the benchmark for the Kyoto Protocol.

African nations want the rich to cut by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, saying that their people are suffering most from disruptions to water and food supplies.

In London, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that a Copenhagen deal in December would be "a very important milestone." But he said it would not be a detailed legal text, reflecting a global scaling back of ambition for the meeting.

That view was echoed by the European Commission.

"Of course, we are not going to have a full-fledged binding treaty -- Kyoto type -- by Copenhagen," Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters before meeting President Barack Obama, adding there was still time to agree a framework pact with commitments for rich and developing nations.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown expected agreement on long-term and intermediate targets.

In the Barcelona talks, the last formal U.N. negotiations before Copenhagen, developing countries reiterated charges that rich nations were trying to "kill Kyoto" by merging it into a single pact in Copenhagen. They want rich nations' pledges under Kyoto kept separate from their own actions.

In Beijing, China's Premier Wen Jiabao demanded that the European Union stick to the existing Kyoto Protocol, rather than drive a new pact, in further signs of rifts in U.N. talks.

Wen told Barroso in a telephone call: "The key to whether the meeting can achieve success is adhering to the (UN climate) Convention and the Protocol," the official People's daily reported on Tuesday.

(Writing by Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn in Barcelona, editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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