Bonn,   May 31— Efforts to cut emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming are being hindered by a rift between Europe and the United States over the issue, a top United Nations official said today.
    Chief U.N. climate official Michael Zammit Cutajar, opening a meeting on climate change, said the United States and Europe still disagreed sharply on how to apply the December 1997 Kyoto protocol, which sought binding cuts on emissions.
     “There is a clear difference between two economically powerful groups of countries on this issue,” Cutajar said at the start of talks between delegates from some 150 countries.
     He said it was “highly likely” that the row would not be resolved in time for a meeting of ministers this November, and that further negotiations would be needed to meet deadlines for emissions cuts laid out in the Kyoto treaty.

Enforcing Kyoto Agreement
At a summit in the Japanese city of Kyoto 18 months ago, 11 days of talks and a chaotic finale that came near to collapse produced the world’s first treaty on cutting greenhouse gases, present in car exhaust fumes and other pollutants. 
     Nations have until the end of next year to decide how they will achieve the Kyoto target of cutting world greenhouse emissions by an average 5.2 percent over 1990 levels by the period 2008-12. 
     The United States, the world’s biggest polluter, wants to make full use of part of the protocol offering leeway on national targets in return for helping poorer countries to cut their emissions.

Limiting Emissions Trading
Europe, meanwhile, insists that limits should be placed on “emissions trading,” and will be using the meeting in Bonn to rally other countries to its position.
     In Kyoto, there was wide acceptance that the heating up of the earth’s surface from gases trapped in the atmosphere was causing more frequent storms, melting polar ice and raising sea levels that threaten to engulf low-lying islands.
     While no major political breakthrough is expected during this month’s talks, failure to clear the ground for at least some progress in November would be bad news for a treaty which has still to gain a legally binding status.
     Cutajar said that while 83 countries and the European Commission had signed the treaty, only nine had formally ratified it.
     The document does not become legally binding until it has been ratified by 55 countries which together represent 55 percent of the emissions of the major world economies.

S U M M A R Y

Sharp disagreement between the U.S. and Europe over greenhouse gas emission cuts threaten the 1997 Kyoto treaty.

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