- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday December 19 2000 02.17 GMT
Europe's final chance of clinching an agreement with the United States to cut global warming under a sympathetic Clinton administration ended in abject failure last night after the two sides failed to resolve their gaping differences and cancelled a meeting in Oslo due this week.
After the collapse of climate change talks in the Hague last month, yesterday's meeting of EU environment ministers in Brussels had been seen as the best hope of breathing life into stalled negotiations.
However, the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand flatly rejected an offer of fresh talks from the EU, arguing that a successful outcome was highly unlikely.
It will now be far more difficult for the EU to strike an agreement on how to implement the 1997 UN Kyoto protocol on cutting greenhouse gases with an America led by President Bush who is said not to be particularly interested in environmental issues.
Deputy prime minister, John Prescott, said the EU had missed a unique opportunity but was careful not to pin the blame for the failure on France's sparky environment minister, Dominique Voynet, with whom he has crossed swords in the past.
"I'm rather sad that we've missed this opportunity. It would have been with the old negotiating presidential team of the Clinton presidency but there will now be a new team in place. Anyone else coming in is going to start from scratch. That's inevitable."
Mr Prescott said part of the problem was that the Americans had fallen back on their old entrenched negotiating positions in the course of two transatlantic teleconferences yesterday making an agreement all but impossible.
Massive differences between the two sides persist - principally over whether the US should be allowed to plant controversial "sink forests" in other parts of the world to soak up its own carbon dioxide emissions which are responsible for global warming.
The US also wants a much wider use of so-called emissions trading - the buying and selling of emissions credits from other countries - than the EU is willing to accept.
Mr Prescott went out of his way to play down tensions with Ms Voynet who famously accused him of being a macho man after he claimed she was too tired to understand the detail of an agreement he had brokered at the Hague.
"It's wonderful," he said when asked to sum up his relationship with the French minister during yesterday's meeting.
"She told me today that I'm the darling of the feminist movement. Both of us are professional politicians and both committed to doing something for the environment."
However, his jolly demeanour contrasted sharply with Ms Voynet's take on the issue. When asked earlier whether the two had patched up their differences she frostily replied that she was not interested in the matter.
