The head of the UN forum that established the 1997 Kyoto Protocol said on Thursday the international community will continue to press for cuts in greenhouse gases.
But Jan Pronk, the Dutch environmental minister and current head of the UN Conference of Parties on global warming, told Dutch television in an interview from Washington that he was concerned about a single country -- a reference to the US -- setting the agenda for international negotiations.
"This is something that must be decided jointly by all countries," Pronk said. "What I find reassuring is that all the other countries have said the process is still ongoing."
Pronk made an unscheduled trip to Washington to clarify the US position on the Kyoto Protocol after statements from the White House that President George Bush will scrap the pact.
With six percent of the world's population, the US is estimated to produce a quarter of the globe's greenhouse gases. Pronk was to travel to Sweden yesterday for talks with EU environmental ministers.
Pronk said there remained widespread international support for ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, which calls on most industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent by 2010.
Scientists believe that greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming, which can cause disastrous weather changes.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, bringing together research by around 2,000 scientists, said this year the consequences could include heavy floods, long droughts and the extinction of countless species.
Bush said earlier on Thursday that he would not agree to any plan that could threaten the US economy, especially in light of domestic energy problems.
Pronk, who presided over the failed attempt in the Hague in November to forge a compromise between the US, the EU and developing nations on how to implement the Kyoto Protocol, criticized the US administration's focus on developing new fossil fuel sources to solve its energy problems.
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