Canada defends UN climate role, overshoots Kyoto

BONN, Germany (Reuters) - Canada defended its leadership of U.N. talks on fighting global warming on Monday, despite admitting it will not meet its own Kyoto Protocol goals.

Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, presiding at the opening of the May 15-26 Bonn meetings, suggested Kyoto should be eased for Canada from 2012 because Ottawa cannot reach its goals.

"The challenge we face in achieving the targets domestically has no relevance to our commitment to ... ensure that we are contributing to the international effort to address climate change," Ambrose said of Canada's 2006 U.N. climate presidency.

Delegates from 189 countries are attending the Bonn talks to bolster the fight against climate change and engage rich states outside the Kyoto Protocol, including the United States and Australia and also developing countries such as China and India.

"We have very onerous targets," said Ambrose, referring to Canada's goals under Kyoto, which came into force last year.

"We will have great difficulty in meeting those targets. We believe they are unachievable," she said. Canada's Kyoto goal is to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases from factories, power plants and cars by 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

Canada's former Liberal government took on the U.N. climate presidency in Montreal in November and the new conservative government will hand over to Kenya in late 2006.

FIFTH COLUMNIST

In Canada, Liberal opposition leader Bill Graham asked parliament on Monday:

"Does the Prime Minister and his party not see the irony in someone who despises Kyoto chairing a conference designed to make Kyoto work or has he sent the minister as some sort of fifth columnist to destroy the system from within?"

Environmentalists also said Canada was not the right nation to try to persuade other countries to cut down on fossil fuels. Continued ...

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