US, Australia unveil Beyond Kyoto pact

Six nations led by the United States and Australia yesterday unveiled a pact to fight global warming, but critics assailed the voluntary deal for offering no emissions targets and said it undermined existing treaties.

The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate - grouping major polluters US and China with India, Japan, South Korea and Australia - seeks new technology to cut greenhouse gases without sacrificing economic development.

US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick insisted it was not a threat to the Kyoto Protocol that Washington and Canberra have refused to ratify because they say it omits developing nations and may threaten jobs at home.

"We are not detracting from Kyoto in any way at all. We are complementing it," Mr Zoellick told reporters on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific security forum in the Lao capital, Vientiane.

"Our goal is to complement other treaties with practical solutions to problems," he said.

The six, which account for nearly half the world's greenhouse emissions, said the pact would "seek to address energy, climate change and air pollution issues within a paradigm of economic development".

Australian Prime Minister John Howard called it a "historic agreement" that was "superior to the Kyoto Protocol".

But environmentalists said the deal was a limited trade and technology accord and no challenger to the UN treaty, which came into force in February.

"It doesn't have anything to do with reducing emissions. There are no targets, no cuts, no monitoring of emissions, nothing binding," said Steve Sawyer of Greenpeace.

"It doesn't address the wider question that two of the richest countries in the world are doing nothing to reduce emissions."

The US and Australia are the only developed nations outside Kyoto, which demand cuts in greenhouse emissions to 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

China and India have ratified Kyoto, but as developing nations they do not have to meet its obligations in the protocol's first phase that ends in 2012. Both fear environmental curbs would restrict their surging economies.