The European Union’s demand for a road map leading to the next legally-binding global warming treaty raises a hurdle that may snarl negotiations at the United Nations climate conference this week.

 

The 27-nation bloc said it accounts for about 11 percent of global emissions and that it can’t act alone on emissions blamed for damaging the environment. Limits under the Kyoto Protocol expire next year. Japan, Russia and Canada have ruled out more commitments under that pact.

 

“We would only be politically able to move ahead into a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol if there is at least a road map forward with others saying when they are going to come into the climate fight,” Artur Runge-Metzger, the European Commission’s lead negotiator, said yesterday at a press briefing opening the talks in Durban, South Africa.

 

The comments, from Kyoto’s strongest supporter in the industrial world, mark the bloc’s biggest set of preconditions and complicate talks to rescue the only international treaty on cutting greenhouse gases.

 

Developing countries oppose binding targets for themselves and view the continuation of Kyoto’s goals for richer nations as the key to the fight against climate change -- even without Japan, Russia and Canada onboard. They’re concerned the EU’s plan, calling for a treaty coming into force by 2020, as a way of delaying action.