COPENHAGEN – President Barack Obama met other world leaders in a last push for a new global climate deal on Friday, after negotiators failed to reach a deal on carbon cuts in all-night talks.
Obama and other leaders tried to muster agreement on central issues from carbon cuts to international scrutiny of climate actions at the U.N.-led talks in Copenhagen.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking as the meeting broke up, said there was still no deal and Chinese resistance to monitoring of emissions was a sticking point.
Also at the meeting were Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Negotiators from 193 countries reached consensus on financing and on temperature targets. A draft text called for $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor nations cope with climate change and sought to limit warming to two degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels.
But the all-night meeting broke up in the morning without a deal on the central element of a climate deal — the timing and degree of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Obama was due to meet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao later on the sidelines of the talks.
Andreas Carlgren, the environment minister of EU president Sweden, said only the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters China and the United States could unlock a deal.
