Beijing cites as 'groundless' claims it is blocking conference progress
France released a crucial new blueprint Wednesday at the 195-nation climate rescue talks, reporting important progress with some sticking points two days ahead of the deadline for a UN deal.
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the document revealed "emerging compromises" on the way to a historic agreement to rein in heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet.
After a "long night" of talks, negotiators produced a 29-page draft for the pact, lopping 14 pages off an earlier version and removing three-quarters of the hundreds of points of disagreement, said Fabius, who is presiding over the Paris conference.
"On several topics we are almost at the end of our efforts thanks to the commitment of the parties," Fabius told the conference.
"It is better," he said, though there are "still too many" undecided sections.
Nations remain divided over how to finance the costly effort by developing countries to cope with the catastrophic impact of global warming and what target to set for planetary overheating.
Fault lines also remain on how to share the burden between rich and poor nations, as well as how to review and scale up efforts to slash greenhouse gases.
Decisions on the most divisive arguments are not expected to be reached until the final moments of the negotiations, being held in a sprawling conference venue at Le Bourget on the northern outskirts of Paris.
Separately, China was accused of blocking the progress of the Paris climate change conference in a Financial Times report on Tuesday.
Zou Ji, vice director of the National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, who has been attending the conference, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the accusation was groundless and irresponsible.
One negotiator from a developed country said Chinese officials had tried to water down efforts to create a "common system" for the way countries report to the UN on their carbon dioxide emissions and climate change plans, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
Zou said that the intention of Western countries to establish a common system is not "pure," since they attempted to replace "common but differentiated responsibilities" between developed and developing countries with "unified" ones.
"The common system is a uniform rule to be imposed on the whole world, regardless of the gap between developed and developing countries," Zou said.
He added that since the technology and the foundation of emissions reduction-related policies in developing countries are poorer than developed ones, it is not practical and realistic to impose the two blocks with one standard.
Another envoy was quoted by the Financial Times as saying that Chinese delegates also resisted a measure widely seen as crucial for a successful accord - a requirement for countries to update the pledges they have made to limit their emissions, preferably every five years from around 2020.
China supports a general "stocktaking review of countries" pledges every five years but wants voluntary updating of the carbon dioxide emissions reduction targets, the envoy said.
Zou said that requiring countries to update their targets based on five-year reviews is against the bottom-up approach to climate policy-making with which countries make decisions on their own.
