Japan was sticking to its guns Thursday night in opposing an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, but said the row shouldn't block a "concrete outcome" from being reached at the UN climate summit in Mexico, dpa reported.
"The Kyoto Protocol issue is not the issue," Japan's Foreign Ministry envoy Akira Yamada told reporters in an update on the ongoing talks. "I don't think this is the main obstacle to these outcomes."
But Yamada reiterated Japan's firm opposition to extending the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012: "A second commitment period is neither a fair nor effective way to tackle the climate change challenge."
Japan was instead pushing for one "single legally binding agreement" that would include greenhouse-gas emissions cuts for the United States and China, the world's two biggest emitters.
"We need the participation of all major emitters, all parties, he said.
Ministers were locked behind closed doors through much of Thursday, trying to bridge their differences and reach some kind of global agreement by late Friday or early Saturday morning.
Developing countries have demanded that wealthy nations keep the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty which curbs industrial country emissions, alive beyond 2012 as a condition for them signing onto any kind of global agreement at the Cancun summit.
Yamada said there was still no agreement on the legal form that any future climate treaty should take.
"Still there are no consensus ..o on the point about what does a legally-binding mean," he told reporters. "We have to make consensus."
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