Japan said yesterday it would do its best to bring the US back to the Kyoto climate change pact but gave no sign that it was ready to yield to European pressure to ratify the accord without Washington.
The Japanese Environment Minister, Ms Yoriko Kawaguchi, told a joint news conference with a European Union delegation that arrived in Tokyo earlier in the day that the two sides agreed Washington played an important rule in making the pact effective.
"The road will be a difficult one but as Prime Minister [Junichiro] Koizumi said there is still more time and I think we should try our very best until the very end," she said.
Japan's position is vital to rescuing the treaty to cut greenhouse gases now that the US has dubbed the pact "fatally flawed" and withdrew earlier this year, citing economic concerns.
Because Japan is caught between Brussels and Washington, with its priority on good ties with the US, Tokyo has been stalling for time before making a final decision on what to do if the US stays out of the pact.
On Sunday, Mr Koizumi reiterated there was no need to decide before key talks on climate change in Bonn starting on July 16th and did little to dispel concerns that Japan may be prepared to accept a watered-down treaty.
But in a letter to Mr Goran Persson, Prime Minister of Sweden and President of the European Council, Mr Koizumi dismissed criticism that Japan was delaying progress in the talks.
EU delegation members told Ms Kawaguchi that Brussels would be flexible but urged Japan to be bold enough to ratify without Washington.
"We have to move ahead even without the US and want Japan to do so as well," the EU Environment Commissioner, Ms Margot Wallstrom, said. "It is important that we don't lose the momentum."
Climate Changes, an international network of senior climate change policy researchers launched in London yesterday, urged the world to forge ahead with the Kyoto agreement even without the participation of the US, the world's biggest polluter.
The Belgian Environment Minister, Ms Magda Aelvoet, in a Japanese newspaper on Saturday, said she did not rule out revising the Kyoto pact to try to bring the US back on board.