Climate dialogue

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged world environment ministers to "find a basis of trust" before the next UN climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, in November, after talks in Copenhagen last December failed to achieve international consensus on how to tackle climate change.

"One thing that did not work well in Copenhagen is that a small circle met and the regional groups felt left out of the debate," Merkel said in Bonn on Sunday.

Germany and Mexico hope to get negotiations moving again and have invited representatives from developed and developing countries to Bonn to flesh out common ground on environmental issues.

Developed versus developing nations

Mexican President Felipe Calderon stressed that developing and developed countries must agree on the issue of finance for poorer countries, to enable them to fight climate change.

"This atmosphere of trust is something we really need to make use of for the fast-track financing," he told ministers in Bonn. "2010 is the year when we need to take action."

The conference - dubbed the Petersberg Climate Dialogue - comes five months after the disastrous summit in Copenhagen last December, where countries merely agreed that global temperatures should rise by no more than 2 degrees Celsius, but failed to specify any details on how this could be achieved and shared out between the nations.

Developing countries have long demanded that richer countries must pay a bigger share in the fight against greenhosue gas emissions, as big industrial nations are the main polluters.

Mexico is slated to host the next full-scale UN climate summit at the resort of Cancun in late November.

Meeting designed to re-kindle confidence

The Petersberg gathering - at Germany's former hilltop government guesthouse when Bonn was still the capital - is not expected to make any formal resolutions, but the Germans and Mexicans are hoping it will come up with ideas to clear the logjam on climate policies.

German environment minister Norbert Roettgen said the purpose of the meeting was "confidence-building" among emerging and industrial nations.

"We have to get trust and flexibility back into the climate process," he said.

The German environment minister also urged the European Union to take on the pioneering role of developing and implementing low-carbon policies.

The two most important figures at the Bonn talks are likely to be the chief US and Chinese negotiators. World leaders realized in Copenhagen that climate talks would continue to be very difficult.

Already, the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has dampened expectations, telling the German newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt that there would probably not be any legally binding agreements made in Cancun, but perhaps some progress in deciding who makes the sacrifices.

gb/ng/dpa/epd/AP/AFP
Editor: Nigel Tandy