Africans accuse rich of trying to kill Kyoto

COPENHAGEN, Dec 14 (Reuters): African nations accused rich countries today of trying to kill the UN's existing Kyoto Protocol for cutting greenhouse gases, in a deep split four days before world leaders aim to forge a new UN climate pact.

Developed countries are trying to ''collapse'' the entire 192-nation talks, Kamel Djemouai, an Algerian official who heads the African group at the December 7-18 talks, told a pressconference.

He said that plans by rich nations ''means that we are going to accept the death of the only one legally binding instrument that exists now,'' referring to Kyoto.

Other African delegates also said the rich wanted to ''kill Kyoto''.

Developing nations want to extend the existing Kyoto Protocol, which obliges rich nations except the United States to cut emissions of greenhouse gases until 2012, and work out a separate new deal for developing nations.

But most rich nations want to merge the 1997 Kyoto Protocol into a new, single accord with obligations for all as part of an assault on warming that the UN panel of climate scientists says will bring more heatwaves, floods and rising seas.

''We need two-track outcomes,'' Djemouai said, wearing a button on his jacket saying ''Kyoto Yes''.

Danish Minister Connie Hedegaard, presiding at the meeting, plans to hold talks today to appoint environment ministers to try to break deadlock in key areas, such as the depth of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by developed nations by 2020, and cash to help the poor.

Most developed nations favour a single track largely because the United States, the number two greenhouse gas emitter behind China, is outside Kyoto.

They fear signing up for a new Kyoto while Washington slips away with a less strict regime alongside big developing nations.

A summit of 110 world leaders will try to agree a solution on Friday.

British Energy and Climate Minister Ed Miliband expressed sympathy with developing countries who ''don't want the Kyoto Protocol track to be ended before we have a new legal instrument or instruments in place.'' ''Equally I think developing countries understand that for Kyoto parties to sign a partial treaty now with many countries outside it would be irresponsible for the climate,'' he said.

Such a deal would be ''accepting we would have continuation of simply some countries in the treaty,'' he said.

Kyoto binds almost 40 industrialised nations to cut emission, mainly from burning fossil fuels, by at least 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012.

The United States stayed out, reckoning Kyoto would cost too much and wrongly omitted developing nations, but President Barack Obama wants to take part in cutting emissions in a new deal stretching to 2020.

Separately a UN report projected that climate change will turn the oceans 150 percent more acidic by 2050, threatening coral reefs that are key refuges and feeding grounds for commercial fish species.

Oceans are turning gradually more acid as they absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activities, it said.

The corrosive effect undermines the ability of corals, crabs or lobsters to build protective shells.

Detained Americans to be tried in Iran-minister TEHRAN, Dec 14 (Reuters): Three US citizens detained in Iran and charged with espionage will stand trial, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said today, in a case that could further strain relations between Tehran and Washington.

The three were held after they strayed into Iran from northern Iraq at the end of July.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said Washington strongly believed there was no evidence to support any charges against them.

''They have entered Iran with suspicious aims.

The judiciary will try them,'' Mottaki told a press conference, adding that ''relevant sentences'' would be issued.

He did not elaborate.

Last month, Iran's judiciary announced espionage charges against the trio Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27.

Their families said they were hiking and had strayed across the border accidentally.

The United States cut diplomatic ties with Tehran after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.

The two countries are now embroiled in a row over Iran's nuclear programme, which the West suspects is aimed at making bombs.

Tehran denies this.

Under Iran's Islamic law, sharia, espionage can be punishable by death.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested in an interview with the American television network NBC in September that the Americans' release might be linked to the release of Iranian diplomats he said were being held by US troops in Iraq.

Some Iranian officials have linked the entry of the Americans to unrest that erupted after the June presidential election.

Ahmadinejad's re-election sparked Iran's worst unrest since the revolution.

Authorities deny vote-rigging and portrayed opposition protests as a foreign-backed bid to undermine the Islamic state.