Protests fail to derail climate talks

Mr Loy took the full force of one protest

By BBC News Online's environment correspondent Alex Kirby in The Hague

The UN climate conference here has been marked by a series of apparently spontaneous and disparate demonstrations.

In one audacious protest, the chief US negotiator had a cream cake shoved in his face.

We came to speak for those who are not here, for those who cannot speak, for the marginalised.

Protester George Marshall

But the protesters have not succeeded in bringing proceedings to a halt - with just 48 hours to go, the conference itself appears still delicately balanced, with nobody willing to bet on ultimate success.

The deep gap between the US and the European Union shows no sign of narrowing.

The conference president, Jan Pronk, the Dutch Environment Minister, said he still put the prospects of a successful outcome at no more than 50-50.

He said everyone was showing a willingness to reach a deal but this did not mean there would be one.

'Catalyst'

Mr Pronk said the negotiations on matters of substance which had now begun in earnest might lead to partial agreement.

Mr Pronk (left) is pushing for a full agreement

If this happened, he said, he would announce his own proposals as a basis for negotiations "to try to act as a catalyst for the conference."

Those proposals would have to be environmentally credible, and would also have to satisfy all parties to the talks.

"We still have many years to go together," Mr Pronk said.

"We must not allow any tricks."

Protests deplored

He also deplored the fact that the conference had been disrupted by protests.

There were several incidents, including one in which a group burst in to one of the main negotiating sessions and held the chairman hostage for a time.

Several groups staged protests in the conference hall

Mr Pronk said he had asked some of the protestors to stay for a discussion, but they had replied that the conference was a sham, and had then left.

The daily press briefing by the US delegation was interrupted when a protestor rammed a cream cake into the face of the chief US negotiator, Frank Loy.

He cut the briefing short, but later released a statement.

It read: "On the eve of Thanksgiving, pumpkin pie would have been a more traditional choice, but what I really want is a strong agreement to fight global warming."

'Dialogue is impossible'

One of the protestors, George Marshall of Oxford, UK, told BBC News Online what they had been demonstrating about.

He said: "We came to speak for those who are not here, for those who cannot speak, for the marginalised.

"We think this whole process has become a farce.

"It's all about companies making a profit, not about dealing with the issues. Dialogue is impossible."

For all its show of magnanimity, the US is still seen here by many other delegations, and by most environmental campaign groups, as so wedded to the protection of its own narrow short-term interests that the chasm surrounding it is now almost unbridgeable.

It is at loggerheads with the European Union over how to achieve the cuts in greenhouse gases to which industrialised countries are committed under the Kyoto Protocol.

The EU says at least half of all cuts should be made domestically.

But the US and its allies are arguing that they should be allowed to make unlimited use of the protocol's provisions for counting reductions in other countries' emissions towards their own targets.

This, the EU says, means the US would not in fact have to cut its own emissions at all.