JOHANNESBURG: International diplomacy is arcane, but the negotiations for a world deal on renewable energy, which countries finally agreed on Monday, resembled a nine-month chess game.

By late last week, the major players had negotiated outline positions in pre-summit talks on three continents and were entering the endgame.

There were two proposals: The EU, keen to see its strong renewable energy companies expand, wanted a target of 15 per cent renewables by 2015. The US, Japan and Opec countries, who all fear that the rise of renewables will hurt their own strong fossil fuel companies, were opposed to targets. The US was under particularly strong pressure from its oil companies, who part-funded the Bush election and largely wrote the recent energy bill.

Meanwhile, the Brazilians, with Colombia, Argentina, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland behind them, were ready to step in with a 10 per cent target, which would not have included electricity generated from contentious hydro-power dams and wood fuel.

With neither the EU nor the US prepared to give way, the issue went to ministerial level.

At this point the G77 grouping of poor countries proposed a text which had no without targets but with better subsidies for fossil fuels . The US apparently then struck a deal with the G77 and wrote the new text with Japanese negotiators.

Meanwhile, the EU strengthened its proposal and offered to attach it to the G77 proposal. This way, they hoped, the targets would remain, but there would be concessions for poor countries.

Brazil chose this point to launch its initiative and for a short while the non-government groups grew excited. But it did not get far. Japan, the US and Iran countered with a compromise offering vague wording on cutting energy subsidies.

The EU was holding out for targets and timetables. But by now, deals were close on other parts of the summit’s final declaration and the energy section became part of the mix and liable to be horsetraded.

The US, consistently trying to avoid binding deals, was opposing all targets on water and sanitation. It proposed a sanitation target, which would favour Europe’s water companies, if Europe ceded targets on energy. Europe again refused.

Japan now played its hand. With the EU, it was proposing water and sanitation targets; but with the US, it was opposing energy targets. Foreign minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, one of the world’s most experienced negotiators, who steered through Kyoto in 1997, played a key part.

Ms Kawaguchi sided with the US, partly, it is believed, because Japan does not want to harm its own heavy industry.

The EU, battling to save its targets, held out but after a 10-hour session, the exhausted negotiators knew that without Japan, they were isolated.

“We had been painted into a corner,” said one EU delegate. “But we felt we had progressed well on water, sanitation and chemicals, so perhaps it was not that bad.”

Outside, the NGOs were fuming. “In a meeting of obscene manoeuvrings, this is the most disgusting yet,” said Ian Wilmore of Friends of the Earth.

“One day governments exhort the world to tackle energy and climate change, the next they are helping fossil fuels. This is madness.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.