By John Heilprin
United Nations - The United States said on Tuesday it would be committed to joining the world on a climate treaty with "robust targets and ambitious actions" against heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
But the formal US submission to the United Nations on Tuesday offered no specifics for achieving a strategy for reducing emissions, which will be the topic of treaty talks in December in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The 21-page document represents President Barack Obama's first salvo in the negotiating process.
It says the US is committed to reaching a new, international agreement "based on both the robust targets and ambitious actions that will be embodied in US domestic law and on the premise that the agreement will reflect the important national actions of all countries with significant emissions profiles."
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The new global warming pact is being crafted to succeed the first phase of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires 37 industrialised nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
The United States is the only industrialised nation that did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, but it agreed with more than 180 other nations at a conference in Bali in December to negotiate a new agreement by the end of 2009.
The US "will be submitting additional proposals as the negotiations progress," the Obama administration told the UN.
Obama campaigned on a pledge to reduce US emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a dramatic turnabout from the administration of President George Bush, who rejected Kyoto on grounds that it would cause too much harm to the US economy and was unfair because it didn't require similar cutbacks by developing nations.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said Tuesday he was satisfied with the US submission, despite its lack of specific goals or timetable for cutting carbon dioxide and other climate-warming gases.
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