http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2042143/bangkok-talks-stall-dismisses-talk-international-treaty

The UN's long-running climate change negotiations have once again been thrown into deadlock, after a week of talks in Bangkok failed to deliver significant progress and the US gave its clearest indication yet that it could abandon the UN process.

The week of negotiations in the Thai capital ended today with the UN climate change secretariat insisting that "positive discussions" had taken place through a series of workshops tasked with improving emission reduction targets for developed countries, developing a clean technology transfer mechanism, and enhancing climate mitigation plans for developing nations.
However, the first meeting since last year's Cancun Summit was overshadowed by the failure of negotiators to agree a scheduled work programme for this year's meetings, after developing nations insisted that the talks should focus in larger part on extending the Kyoto Protocol beyond its current commitment period, which is due to expire next year.
Industrialised nations countered that this year's talks should focus on delivering the commitments agreed during the Cancun Summit, after a number of countries, including the US, Japan and Russia, signalled that they will not sign up to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol under any circumstances.
The stand-off is undermining attempts to agree a replacement treaty. and could result in the Kyoto Treaty expiring in 2012, removing the legal foundations for the UN's carbon trading mechanisms and leaving industrialised countries with no legally binding emission reduction targets.
Diplomats said that the stand-off over the future of Kyoto had soured the week-long talks, reversing the improvement in relations between rich and poor nations that had been apparent at the Cancun Summit.
The prospects of an agreement being reached at this year's main UN Climate Summit in Durban in December were dealt a further blow on Wednesday, when US climate envoy Todd Stern said in an interview with news agency Bloomberg that extending the Kyoto Protocol was "unrealistic" and "not doable".
In a wide-ranging interview, Stern said that the Bangkok talks had been marred by "bickering" and, in a potentially explosive move, insisted that a legally binding climate treaty was neither realistic nor necessary.
"Legally binding international obligations to cut emissions are not necessary," Stern said at a Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in Washington. "It is the national plans of countries, written into law and regulations, that count and that bind."
The comments received short shrift from Christiana Figueres, head of the UN climate change secretariat, who told reporters in Bangkok that the UN remained the only institution capable of delivering an international agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
"There is no other venue where every country is at the table. There is no other venue where the most vulnerable country is at the table where it needs to be. There is no other venue equipped to take decisions," she said.