Environment Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said Friday that she has asked the United States to present an alternative to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to curb global warming by the time of the next U.N. climate conference in late October.
She told reporters in Washington that she made the request in a meeting with Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for global affairs. Kawaguchi is on a six-day trip to the U.S. that began Tuesday.
"If an international consensus is reached at the COP7, there will be little room to discuss U.S. proposals," Kawaguchi said.
She was referring to the seventh session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, scheduled to open Oct. 29 in Marrakesh, Morocco.
The U.S. side only repeated that it is considering the issue at the Cabinet level.
The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialized states to cut emissions of greenhouse gases between 2008 and 2012 by an average of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels.
The administration of President George W. Bush rejected the protocol as "fatally flawed" and said it would pursue an alternate plan to fight global warming.
The resumed COP6 in late July in Bonn struck a deal on the core elements of rules to implement the Kyoto Protocol, but the U.S. remained on the sidelines.