The United States has again firmly rejected signing the Kyoto Agreement on global warming, saying the damage the treaty would cause to its economy would also hurt developing countries.
"It will have the impact of doing significant harm to our economy. We will not sign an agreement just to say that we signed it," Harlan L. Watson, the senior US climate change negotiator, said on the sidelines of a UN conference in India on global warming.
"There is a very tight linkage between growth in the developed world and the developing world. Every time the US economy is depressed, our imports are also depressed," Watson told reporters.
Under the 1997 Kyoto agreement, rich industrialised countries would be committed to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases by a timeframe of 2008-2012.
Kyoto is likely to go into effect next year if it is ratified by Russia. The treaty needs to be signed by countries that accounted for 55 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in 1990.
