S. Africa Takes Stage at Climate Talks

Dec. 2, 2008 -- Negotiators at the U.N. climate talks in Poznan got down to work on Tuesday as South Africa headed demands for rich nations to agree to tough targets in a new pact for defeating global warming.

"We're out of the starting gate," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), organizing the 12-day conference that began here on Monday.

"We're off, and the work is progressing... my sense is that governments are keen to move things forward."

The meeting's key task is to whittle down a document, the size of a small phonebook, for action to tackle greenhouse gas emissions and step up financial help beyond 2012.

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The hope is that the document can be sculpted into a blueprint leading to a deal in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The serious haggling will be left to a string of meetings throughout 2009 but already the Poznan talks have outlined the likely areas of battle.

On the table are widely varying proposals as to who should do what to cut their carbon pollution and by what year, and how to deliver financial aid and clean technology to poor, vulnerable countries.

Delegates on Monday set up a roster of working groups, grouped according to theme, to try to cut through the negotiation undergrowth.