A new international agreement capping global emissions of greenhouse gases will hinge to a large extent on developed countries agreeing on comparable cuts, dpa cited an advisor to the Swedish prime minister as saying today. "If we don't have that, we can never put pressure on developing countries," Lars-Erik Liljelund, advisor on climate issues to Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, said at a briefing. Sweden will July 1 take over the six-month presidency of the European Union, one of the main players in ongoing climate talks. Climate negotiators are currently meeting in Bonn, Germany, and other meetings are planned before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. The Copenhagen conference is aimed to adopt a treaty that will succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012. Liljelund - former head of the Swedish environmental protection agency - noted that industrialized countries have set different targets for their cuts, citing the European Union, the United States, Canada and Australia as examples. Another complication is that the US never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, while the EU has added 12 new member states since that treaty was signed. Some of the new EU members are calling for more burden-sharing within the bloc against the backdrop of the current financial criis, Liljelund said.
