Kjell Larsson: Low-level meetings

On Monday the EU delegation was left out in the cold when Bob Smith, head of the Senate's environmental committee, cancelled a planned meeting.

And on Tuesday, the delegation, headed by Kjell Larsson, Sweden's environment minister, and Margot Wallstroem, the EU's environment commissioner, will meet with relatively low-level officials.

Extensive action

They will also meet Christine Whitman, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, but recent events suggest Ms Whitman is not calling the shots when it comes to Washington's environmental policy.

One EU official said he got the feeling that the US administration did not give a damn.

Ms Whitman has been overruled on US policy

The Kyoto treaty would require industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to roughly 5% below 1990 levels by 2012.

Because the US is the world's largest producer of such gases, the Kyoto targets would require extensive action from the country. US emissions are now 15% above 1990 levels.

Mr Bush argues that a global-warming programme must encompass developing countries as well as industrialised ones.

Issue closed

No country has yet ratified the Kyoto treaty, although a number, including the US, have signed it.

On Monday, a group of 10 prominent figures addressed an open letter to Mr Bush urging him to take climate change seriously.

Mr Bush was sent an open letter about climate change

"No challenge we face is more momentous than the threat of global climate change," the letter, which appeared in Time magazine, says.

The letter signers include former US and Soviet leaders Jimmy Carter and Mikhail Gorbachev, financier George Soros, physicist Stephen Hawking and actor Harrison Ford.

Time also published a poll on Monday showing that 75% of Americans see global warming as a serious problem and 67% say Mr Bush should work towards a plan to deal with the problem.

There has been some talk of linking Kyoto to the next trade liberalisation round, although at present no European official will make that link explicit.

Our correspondent says it is difficult to see where US movement might come from.

Since Mr Bush's comments, no-one in the administration has had anything to say on the question of Kyoto. It is as if the issue were completely closed.