United Nations Radio

The head of the UN Climate Change Convention Secretariat, Yvo de Boer, told journalists in New York that last week's talks in Bangkok were a good beginning to a good ending.

They followed the breakthrough Bali Conference on Climate Change, where countries agreed to begin formal negotiations and scheduled them for 2009 in Copenhagen. Mr. de Boer said the challenge that lies ahead is huge - to draft in one-and-a-half years the most complicated international agreement, with divergent interests at stake.

"The first essential is, I believe, the further and meaningful engagement of developing countries, providing you can address a second hurdle which is to provide the financial resources that would make it possible for developing countries to engage without harming their primary concerns surrounding economic growth and poverty eradication. And at the same time we realize that those financial resources are not going to begin to flow, unless major industrialized countries make significant emissions reduction commitments, because then the market will begin to do its work."

Mr. de Boer said the only way to meet these challenges successfully is through a process where all sides feel that their interests are being respected at the negotiating table.

Reporting for UN Radio, I'm Bissera Kostova.

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