Tight security at environment talks

Police ensure demonstrators are kept from G8 meeting

Thousands of police have been deployed around a conference centre in the Italian city of Trieste, where environment ministers from the leading industrialised countries, the G8, are discussing global warming.

Several thousand anti-globalisation demonstrators staged a loud and colourful protest, but were kept away from the venue by police barricades.

There is consensus ...that global climate change is an enormously important issue

Christine Todd Whitman, US representative

The meeting is the first opportunity for the G8 ministers to gauge the attitude of the new administration in the United States.

Last year, crucial talks in The Hague on implementing the 1997 Kyoto agreement on reducing greenhouse emissions collapsed over differences between the US and the European Union.

Key meeting

The US representative at the Trieste talks, Christine Todd Whitman, who heads the US Environmental Protection Agency, has said Washington takes global warming seriously and will attend the next key meeting in Bonn in July.

But she said the Bush administration planned to review completely it predecessor's stance on global warming and would not automatically offer the same concessions that were agreed at The Hague.

Christine Todd Whitman: frank discussion

Mrs Whitman told reporters in Trieste that the discussion were very frank and open.

"It's clear there's a consensus among everyone at the table that global climate change is an enormously important issue that has to be confronted in each country's policy discussions," she said.

Rising temperatures

After the disappointment in The Hague, the talks in Bonn are the big hope for a breakthrough on implementing the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by around 5% by 2010.

Most countries are refusing to ratify the Kyoto deal until rules on how to implement the cuts are in place.

With scientists predicting an increase of up to 6% in average world temperatures over the next 100 years, environmentalists say the Kyoto accord is the best chance to save the planet from rising sea levels and massive weather changes.

The Trieste meeting is being attended by ministers from Italy, the US, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, the UK and Russia.