By Constant Brand
Associated PressMarch 23, 2001
European Union leaders urged US President George W. Bush on Friday to change his position on climate change and adhere to international commitments to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
In a letter to Bush, Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson, whose country holds the EU presidency, and European Commission President Romano Prodi expressed ''deep concern'' on the effects of climate change. They urged Bush to join the 15-nation EU in urgent talks to salvage the 1997 accord on climate change, reached in Kyoto, Japan. ''To the union an agreement ... leading to real reductions in green house gas emissions, is of utmost importance,'' the letter said.
In opening a two-day summit, EU leaders reiterated their commitment to meeting the Kyoto targets in reducing emissions and urged the United States and other nations who signed up to the protocol to do the same. The Bush administration said last week it takes climate change seriously. However, it would not call for national controls on carbon dioxide emissions.
''This is a worrying development (for Kyoto),'' Dik Benschop, Dutch European affairs minister, said at the EU summit, suggesting that the Bush administration tried to back out of the Kyoto accord.
At Kyoto, developed nations pledged to cut heat-trapping carbon emissions by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels. The gases are widely blamed for the greenhouse effect of rising temperatures around the planet. American and European nations have been at odds however over how to implement the protocol.
''The global and long-term importance of climate change, and the need for a joint effort by all industrial countries in this field makes it an integral and important part of relations between the United States and the EU,'' the EU letter said. United Nations talks on implementing the Kyoto agreement and cutting greenhouse gas emissions resume July 16 in Bonn, Germany.
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