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China, US to continue green talks

By Fu Jing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-05 09:15

Students participate in a catwalk show to display dresses made from recycled materials at a primary school in Chuzhou, Anhui province, yesterday, one day before World Environment Day.[Wang Jiaguo]

Chinese and US envoys will meet in Beijing on Monday to talk about ways the countries can advance the fight against climate change.

The talks will take place at the same time as UN negotiations on the same subject in Bonn, Germany.

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Li Liyan, a deputy division director of the Climate Change Department under the National Development and Reform Commission, told China Daily that US climate envoy Todd Stern will meet his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua.

Li refused to go into details about the agenda.

While both China and the US have played down the bilateral talks, a reliable source told China Daily the US delegation will be in China for four days.

"He (Stern) will arrive on Sunday, start official talks on Monday and leave on Wednesday afternoon," he said, adding that the envoys may meet representatives of non-governmental organizations, industry leaders and academics.

China and the US, the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, will play an important role in producing a climate change deal in December to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

"The importance of the bilateral talks is as clear as crystal," the source said. "It is held while 181 UN members are negotiating in Bonn at the same time," the source said.

As the UN talks in Bonn got underway, China's climate ambassador, Yu Qingtai, told Reuters yesterday China will continue to step up action to fight climate change. And he cautioned against unfair "new demands" by rich nations that would sabotage a new UN treaty set to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.

Yu said rich nations have introduced proposals that go beyond the roadmap for UN negotiations agreed in Bali in 2007.

"Copenhagen is only six months away, instead of introducing new concepts, controversial concepts, unfair concepts, the world would be better served if we could focus on what is already agreed upon in the Bali roadmap."

Meanwhile, Corrado Clini, a senior official with Italy's Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea, told China Daily yesterday that Chinese climate envoy Xie is interested in jointly developing green technologies with Italy and other countries because they are the most effective way to address green issues.

Climate change envoys Xie and Stern have met several times this year. The two countries have identified climate change as a "primary area" of cooperation.

Stern's visit is the latest high-profile trip to China by US officials over climate change. Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator John Kerry met Chinese leaders and reached a consensus that the countries will work on clean energy and climate change.

China has urged developed countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent of their 1990 levels by the year 2020.

Si Tingting contributed to the story