RealAudio of Jennifer Morgan's statement

From the ENB New York Office: A. Peter Burleigh, Charge d’Affaires of the United States Mission to the United Nations, signed the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, at 3:00 pm, Thursday 12 November, at UN Headquarters. The United States is the sixtieth nation to sign the Protocol. In a brief statement, Ambassador Burliegh cited the signing of the Protocol as a reaffirmation of US commitment to working with other nations to address the challenge of climate change. He also said that signing the Protocol serves US environmental, economic and national goals. He noted participation of key developing countries, carbon trading and the Clean Development Mechanism as issues that still must be addressed.

With less than twenty-four hours of scheduled conference time remaining at COP-4, the sounds of "table thumping" are emerging from ministerial sessions set up to make the political decisions on some key outcomes. Ministers are reported to be using initial meetings to re-state long held positions. COP-4 President, Maria Julia Alsogaray (Argentina) has set up a high level structure for input from the ministers and is pressing ministers to begin drafting agreed text. An extended bureau has been created to oversee the progress of a core group and four working groups of ministers and country representatives dealing with: Kyoto mechanisms (formerly known as the ‘flexibility mechanisms’); non-Annex I communications; COP/MOP-1; UNFCCC Articles 4.3 (a) and (b); and the combined issues of technology transfer, the Kyoto Mechanisms, Activities Implemented Jointly, and UNFCCC Articles 4.8 and 4.9 on adverse impacts and compensation. Reports from the working groups are going back to the core group with three representatives of the G-77, one from the EU and one from the Umbrella Group.