Chinese negotiators at global climate change negotiations Friday warned that the talks were making very slow progress, and lashed out at the U.S. for failing to take measures that could break the deadlock.
Chinese negotiators at global climate change negotiations Friday warned that the talks were making very slow progress, and lashed out at the U.S. for failing to take measures that could break the deadlock.

"We are all concerned about the unbalanced process of international negotiations on climate change. We are all concerned about the slow pace of negotiations," Ministry of Foreign Affairs official Huang Huikang told a plenary session of delegates attending the talks.

"We wish to speed up the progress....But now it is pretty disappointing," he said, adding that China 's stance hadn't changed: "No compromise on any base principles in international climate change negotiations. No compromise on two-track systems."

Representatives from more than 190 nations have been meeting in Tianjin since Monday to try to hammer out a framework pact to take to ministers at a summit in Cancun that starts Nov. 29, but there have been few signs of a breakthrough.

Last December, efforts to reach a deal at a summit in Copenhagen ended with only a last-minute, non-binding accord reached amid an atmosphere of bitter recrimination.

Su Wei, director of the National Development and Reform Commission's department of Climate Change, was more blunt. "The biggest obstacle is the U.S. Their domestic legislation on climate change hasn't passed the Congress. If America doesn't make any action, other developed countries also won't act," he told Dow Jones Newswires. The NDRC is China 's state economic planning agency.

The United Nations-sponsored Tianjin talks, and the Cancun summit, are aimed at drawing up a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

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