Canada defends U.N. climate role, overshoots Kyoto

BONN, Germany, May 15 (Reuters) Canada defended its leadership of UN talks on fighting global warming today despite admitting that Ottawa will not meet its own goals under the Kyoto Protocol.

Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, who is chairing the May 15-26 meetings in Bonn, has suggested that Kyoto should be softened for Canada in a second period from 2012 saying Ottawa had no chance of reaching its goals.

''The challenge we face in achieving the targets domestically has no relevance to our commitment to ... ensure that we are contributing to the international effort to address climate change,'' Ambrose said of Canada's 2006 UN climate presidency.

Delegates from 189 countries are attending the Bonn talks aimed at bolstering a global fight against climate change and engaging rich nations outside the Kyoto Protocol, including the United States and Australia as well as developing countries such as China and India.

''We have very onerous targets that were set for us, negotiated for us,'' Ambrose told a news conference of Canada's goals under Kyoto, which entered into force last year.

''We will have great difficulty in meeting those targets. We believe they are unachievable,'' she said of Canada's Kyoto goal of cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases from factories, power plants and cars by 6 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

Canada's former government took on the UN climate presidency in Montreal in November and the new conservative government will hand over to Kenya in late 2006.

Environmentalists said Canada was not the right nation to try to persuade other nations to rein in fossil fuels.

Ambrose ''must live up (to Canada's Kyoto goals) or stand down,'' said Jennifer Morgan, climate policy director of the WWF environmental group. ''Vague statements about 'commitments to international efforts' are not serious.'' MORE REUTERS SHB HS2116