UK News 27-11-2000 Prescott Attacks French Minister who: John Prescott what: Says French minister is to blame for global warming summit collapse where: The Hague, Netherlands when: Yesterday snippet: "Furious John Prescott accused French environment minister Dominique Voynet of falling down on the job last night," says The Mirror. "In a scathing attack, he mocked her for saying she was too tired to understand an agreement he had brokered with the USA at an international conference on global warming." "She got cold feet," he told a BBC radio interviewer after the world climate change conference at The Hague in Holland, alleging that Ms Voynet "felt she could not explain it, said she was exhausted and tired and could not understand the detail and then refused to accept it. That is how the deal fell." Mr Prescott aimed to secure an agreement between Europe and the USA to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but the talks collapsed this weekend without success, amid fears that the forthcoming changeover in US government would further slow progress. "The collapse of the talks had been likely all week," writes Nick Nuttall The Times. "France, which holds the European Union presidency, attacked US loopholes in speeches that were almost Gaullist in their anti-American rhetoric." Yesterday, environment minister Michael Meacher was hopeful that an emergency meeting of the UN convention on climate change would be arranged within the next couple of months. "It`s all a muddle and a tragedy," he said. "But we will recover. The world`s got to have a deal, the storms and floods are going to go on happening." [... more]

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