March 29, 2008	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 20, 1429

OSLO: Up to 190 nations will start work on a new UN climate treaty in Bangkok on Monday, in a test of how far the world has progressed after years of deadlock highlighted by a US outburst about a duck in 2005.

“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck,” chief US climate negotiator Harlan Watson said in Montreal, denouncing what he called a veiled bid to launch negotiations on a pact to combat global warming.

Opposed to the start of any negotiations, he gathered up his papers and walked out of a late-night United Nations meeting, leaving the other, stunned delegates around the table. He returned only the next day after concessions were made.

Less than three years later, Watson will sit down for the March 31-April 4 meeting in Bangkok with many of the same officials who were in Canada to start negotiations due to end in late 2009 with a tough global treaty to fight climate change.

But questions remain over whether the United States, the only rich country opposed to caps on emissions of greenhouse gases under the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, has really changed or is merely being dragged into negotiations.

Bangkok may also give signs about how far developing nations led by China and India are willing to go in rein in their rising emissions.—Reuters