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ASEM Summit a Failure in Hamburg

No Asian Commitment on Climate Change

European ministers were hoping to move their Asian couterparts closer to a firm commitment on climate change in Hamburg -- to set the tone for a G-8 climate accord next week. But the meeting ended in failure.

A crucial agreement on climate change failed to materialize in final talks at the ASEM summit in Hamburg on Tuesday, and the continuing gulf between European and developing Asian nations may likewise sink hopes for a climate agreement at next week's G-8 summit in Heiligendamm.

The two-day summit of 46 ministers from 43 European Union and Asian countries ended with a vague statement on reducing greenhouse gases. The participants agreed merely to "recognize the important role of energy and climate change as a major challenge for foreign policy."

The statement fell well short of setting concrete goals on carbon dioxide emission reductions -- necessary, say scientists, to slow the rate of climate change.

The failure to reach an agreement is a setback for German Foreign Minister Fank-Walter Steinmeier, who played host at the Hamburg meeting. He'd held advance talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi to urge China and a number of other Asian countries to show more commitment on climate change. But Yang emerged from the talks unmoved. He said China had its own carbon-emissions targets and said it was up to industrialized countries -- like those represented at the G-8 -- to cut greenhouse gases.

"China is a developing country, and per capita emission of greenhouse gases in China is much lower than in developed nations," he said. "China is really in need of development. A substantial number of people in China are living under the poverty line."

The ASEM summit was seen as an important step on the road to a far-reaching climate agreement German Chancellor Angela Merkel hopes to push through at next week's G-8 summit. Merkel and other European leaders -- along with Japan -- want to see a 50 percent cut in emissions by 2050, with the goal of keeping the average rise in global temperatures over the next century down to 2 degrees Celsius. The United States has balked at setting such firm goals.

Europeans fear the tepid commitments from China and other Asian nations at ASEM will support the American recalcitrance at Heiligendamm. A lack of agreement there may have further repercussions for a meeting in Bali this December, to negotiate a follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

No Freedom For Suu Kyi

Also at the ASEM meeting in Hamburg, Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win defended his government's one-year extension of house arrest for Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the non-violent pro-democracy activist who has been under house arrest by Myanmar's military dictatorship since late 2003. This represents a second year-long extension: Her current term was supposed to end in May 2006.

After street violence on Monday following a march of up to 5,000 left-wing demonstrators in Hamburg -- who protested the ASEM summit as a manifestation of unfair globalization -- a march of about 300 demonstrators on Tuesday came off peacefully.

ASEM ministers like to stress that they collectively represent over half of the world's economy. "We in the Asia-Europe Meeting represent about 50 percent of gross domestic product, 58 percent of the global population and 60 percent of international trade," is how German Foreign Minister Steinmeier put it on Monday.

msm/dpa