August 31, 2002	Saturday	Karachi, Jamadi-us-Saani 21, 1423

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JOHANNESBURG, Aug 30: Negotiators at the Earth Summit were deadlocked on Friday over a blueprint to empower the desperately poor of the world and reduce mankind’s ravages of the planet as thousands of militants prepared to march in Johannesburg to demand action.

The splits on 14 key issues in the 71-page “Plan for Implementation” pit rich countries against poor and the United States against Europe, delegates said.

US President George W. Bush is snubbing the summit, but 109 other heads of state and government will start arriving on Sunday in a bid to break the impasse.

“If we fail here, things would unravel on a scale that we have not seen before in international negotiations,” British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott told the Independent newspaper of London in an interview published on Friday.

“That would be tragic for the whole world and most of all for those who are in poverty and despair.”

“World leaders are in danger of sleepwalking right into an environmental catastrophe,” warned the conservation group WWF, saying the summit “seems to be moving backwards.”

Danish Environment Minister Hans Christian Schmidt, whose country currently chairs the European Union, warned: “The process slowed down.”

“We must be dedicated to results... especially on time-bound targets like sanitation, renewable energy.”

Other deadlocks include human rights, which the Europeans say are non-negotiable, but on which the United States is siding with the Third World in seeking flexibility, globalization, greater market access for developing countries; and the “precautionary principle” adopted at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and under which no new technologies should be introduced if scientists are unsure about any harmful side-effects.

Schmidt said targets and timetables for alleviating poverty were important for the EU, as was boosting renewable energy sources.

The Europeans are pushing for a target of halving the number of people without access to decent sanitation by 2015 and to increase use of renewable energy sources such as windmills and solar power to 15 percent of the total by 2010 — goals the United States is resisting.

“I cannot understand how countries can disagree — 2.2 million people die every year because of poor sanitation,” said Schmidt in a transparent reference to the Americans.

Developing countries are split on these targets, fearing they might be obliged to spend huge sums on improving sanitation, even if donors help, and members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) do not want to see oil replaced by other energy sources.

Improving the access of developing countries to the markets of industrialised nations and the question of the huge subsidies paid to American and European farmers are such explosive subjects that they will be left for the heads of state and government to deal with, diplomats said.

Evidence is meanwhile growing of a link between global warming and the floods and droughts that devastated parts of Asia and Europe this year, the head of the United Nations’ body on climate change said.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said there was undeniable proof that the Earth was warming.—AFP