All eyes on Trump as UN meeting opens

Uncertainty over America’s future in the climate-rescue Paris Agreement loomed large over UN talks that opened in Bonn on Monday to work out the nuts and bolts of implementing the hard-fought international deal.

US President Donald Trump has yet to announce whether he intends keeping a campaign promise to withdraw Washington from the pact in whose birth his predecessor, Barack Obama, was instrumental.

“There’s no question that if the US withdraws it is going to create difficulties... in the negotiations,” Paula Caballero of the World Resources Institute think-tank said as climate envoys met for their first session since Trump’s arrival in the White House.

She was confident, though, these challenges would not be “unsurmountable”

Businesses, cities and individual US states were firmly on track to a green energy future, she noted.

A total of 196 countries -- all except Nicaragua and Syria -- are parties to the 2015 deal which Trump threatened to “cancel”. The 11-day Bonn haggle is meant to start drafting a “rulebook” to guide member countries in the practical execution of the pact, which seeks to brake global warming by curbing fossil fuel emissions.

But the negotiations risk being overshadowed by fears that the world’s number two carbon polluter will withdraw and throw the entire process into disarray.

The US did send a delegation to the talks, though smaller than in previous years.

Delegation head Trigg Talley, who represented the US under Obama, declined to answer questions on the team’s new brief.

Earlier, a State Department official told AFP: “We are focused on ensuring that decisions are not taken at these meetings that would prejudice our future policy, undermine the competitiveness of US businesses, or hamper our broader objective of advancing US economic growth and prosperity.”