LOW EXPECTATIONS OF BANGKOK CLIMATE TALKS

       Two years ago, governments from around the world came together on the island of Bali and agreed to urgently rein in the heat-trapping gases blamed for deadly heat waves, melting glaciers and rising seas.
       But with just over two months left to reach a deal at a conference in Copenhagen on fighting climate change, negotiations have bogged down over the big issues of emission targets and financing for poor nations. The climate negotiations resume tomorrow in Bangkok, but a growing chorus of voices is warning a pact may be out of reach this year.
       "The odds of concluding a final compregensive treaty in Copenhagen are vanishingly small. Many world leaders have started to acknowledge that," said David M Rubenstein, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
       At Copenhagen, the international community will try to forge a pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
       UN climate chief Yvo de Boer told The Associated Press on Friday that negotiations were far behind where they should be. But he said he remained confident a deal would be reached in Copenhagen and that pushing negotiations into 2010 was not an option.
       Many activists said they were disappointed that a G-20 meeting ended Friday in Pittsburgh without an agreement on financial assistance to help poor countries shift to clearner economies.
       "With 72 days to Copenhagen, rich countries have once again refused to put up the funds needed to deliver the deal in Copenhagen," David Waskov, a climate adviser for Oxfam America, said in Pittsburgh.
       "For the hard-hit countries already on the front lines of climate change, the rich countries' failure to act is particularly devastating," he added.
       At the Bangkok meeting, the second to last before Copenhagen, 1,500 delegates from 180 countries will try to reduce the 200-page draft agreement to something more manageable. Along the way, they hope to close the gap between rich and poor positions and come close to agreement on such issues as reducing deforestation and sharing of technology.
       The two-week meeting follows a UN climate summit last week in New York, where 100 world leaders expressed their support for a deal.
       President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, leaders of the world's two biggest greenhousegas emitters, each vowed tough measures to combat climate change. Japan's new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, pledged his government would seek a 25-per-cent cut in emissions from 1990 levels by 2020.
       "One of the big questions for Bangkok is whether the positive, qualitative spirit we saw from heads of state and ministers [in New York] will trickle down to the negotiating level and make countries more willing to clear away some of underbursh of the text," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
       Most countries want a new climate pact that includes measures limiting temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a level necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

       UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said negotiations were far behind where they should be. But he said he was confident a deal would be reache din Copenhagen.