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US under Kyoto pressure
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THE European Union (EU) on Wednesday said it would go it alone to save the collapsing Kyoto Protocol that was signed to roll back global warming by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
The 15-nation bloc made the remark after its troika had failed to bring the United States back to honour the protocol under which the US, the biggest emitter of heat-trapping gases in the world, would reduce its emissions by six per cent by the year 2012 against the 1990 level.
"The EU will try to get the needed 55 per cent to keep the protocol in place," said Annika Ostergren, environment spokeswoman for the European Commission.
French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said that the new administration of the United States has made him feel "a certain number of worries".
"I have an impression that it (the new US administration) is not isolationist but unilateralist," Jospin told a press conference in Paris.
US President George W Bush did "a very detrimental action" when he refused to support the Kyoto Protocol on global climate changes, he said.
Many other nations joined the voice of criticizing Bush's turnabout on the greenhouse-gas-cutting accords.
"We cannot allow the children of the 21st century to go the same way as the dinosaurs and it would be stupid if the most advanced country in the world failed to understand this," Italian Premier Giuliano Amato said at a debate on globalization in Florence.
Japan asked the US to reconsider its decision to back out of the Kyoto climate change treaty, saying Washington's role was vital to tackling global warming.
Czech Environment Minister Milos Kuzvart said that the Czech Republic was fulfilling its obligations of the treaty and the country's greenhouse gas emissions had been reduced by 25 per cent since 1990. However, "we are worried that after the US opposition to the treaty, other countries might follow suit, thereby posing a serious threat to the treaty's implementation," he added.
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