Tensions rise as talks get deadlocked over targets

Talks on alleviating poverty and protecting resources were said to be "approaching meltdown" at the United Nations Earth Summit yesterday as negotiators remained deadlocked on contentious issues.

As Tony Blair and other world leaders prepared to fly to Johannesburg, efforts to break the deadlock before government heads sit down to rubber-stamp a plan of action were running out of time. The Prime Minister, who arrives from Mozambique on Monday and leaves the same day, is under huge pressure from green groups to provide moral leadership in the absence of President George Bush.

Mr Bush has been heavily criticised for snubbing the summit and refusing to allow his negotiators to sign up to new targets on trade, energy and sanitation. The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, may agree to a sanitation target as a concession next week. But many other differences remain. The US wants a weak agreement to avoid spending commitments or restraints on business.

Russia fuelled the sense of crisis among environmentalists, warning at the summit that it may not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, a move that would kill the pact against global warming, which has already been rejected by the United States. But European Union officials in Johannesburg played down the risk, saying Russia was using familiar bargaining tactics.

While many delegates look to heads of government to resolve outstanding issues, tensions among the leaders might prove even more problematic.

Mr Blair, who has spoken of eliminating poverty in Africa as an aim of foreign policy, has been heavily criticised for only briefly visiting the summit. British officials said it was not Mr Blair's presence that mattered but the UK's role in addressing issues. The Prime Minister may be distracted by meeting President Robert Mugabe, who has often called him a "gay gangster" in the dispute over land reform in Zimbabwe.

A measure of how difficult the Earth Summit negotiations are came yesterday when the European Union briefly withdrew from talks in protest at American intransigence. The EU wants 14 contentious topics be go to ministers for resolution; other countries insist the issues should be resolved by officials. They include energy, trade, globalisation, sanitation, good governance, establishing a fund to help poor countries, trade and finance, climate change, and farm subsidies.

One delegate said: "The summit is moving backwards."

The EU remains insistent on the need for a target to reduce the number of people without access to adequate sanitation by 2015. It is now at 2.4 billion. A target has been set for halving the number – some 1.1 billion – of people without access to clean water. But environmentalists say a clean water target is meaningless without a parallel one on sanitation.

On trade and agriculture, poor countries want the EU to set a timetable to eliminate agricultural subsidies that have created unfair trade practices. The EU wants the matter referred to the next ministerial round of the World Trade Organisation.

On energy, the US strongly opposes targets for introducing renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. The EU wants a target and Mr Blair will raise this issue in a speech. TheAmerican negotiator, however, said: "It wouldn't be appropriate to have a target for all countries."