The Bali climate change conference turned acrimonious as India and China objected to language in the draft resolution. From Bloomberg:
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, left the auditorium in tears after China’s delegation demanded to know why the session had twice been started while separate talks were ongoing elsewhere.
“The secretariat was not aware that meetings were going on elsewhere,” de Boer said, before closing the book in front of him and walking off stage. He returned about 15 minutes later.
Tempers rose during an earlier session when Sun Guoshun, a member of the Chinese negotiating team, told the plenary meeting: “I’m not sure whether the secretariat is our secretariat, and I would like to ask for an apology.” [Full text]
Update: From the Los Angeles Times, “After-hours deal at climate talks”:
After two weeks of often rancorous negotiations and a last-minute effort by the United States to turn back a compromise from developing countries, the United Nations climate talks here ended today with the unanimous adoption of an agreement charting the course for negotiations on a new global warming treaty.
The treaty, which will be hammered out over the next two years, will succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, set to expire in 2012. [Full text]
