Bali climate summit reaches agreement

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BALI, Indonesia, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- The United States reluctantly has agreed to join a global effort to negotiate a new climate change treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"We will go forward and join consensus," Paula Dobriansky, the head of the U.S. delegation said Saturday.

The United States, in a dramatic reversal, agreed to give poorer countries financial aid and clean technology after the U.S. delegation was booed in Bali at the two-week climate change summit, Britain's Telegraph reported Saturday.

The U.S. delegation did succeed, however, in getting the summit to scrap specific targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for itself and other industrial nations. The road map for the proposed treaty now calls for industrial nations to recognize "deep cuts in global emissions" will be needed by 2020, the Telegraph reported.

A new climate treaty, to be negotiated by the end of 2009 and enforced in 2012, would replace the Kyoto Protocol rejected by the United States six years ago.