SYDNEY, Australia - A divided world on the issue of climate change is starting to come together, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday as a summit of pan-Pacific leaders wrapped up.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum, which includes the world's fastest-growing economies, stayed true to its roots this weekend.
Economic growth and international trade remain the touchstones of the organization, despite an uncharacteristic focus on global warming at this 15th annual gathering.
A closing statement Sunday urged the resumption of international trade talks this fall at the World Trade Organization.
The 21 member economies had agreed Saturday to a so-called "aspirational goal'' -- the phrase appears to have been coined for this summit -- of slowing, stopping and eventually reversing greenhouse gas emissions.
But without targets or timelines, environmentalists immediately panned the Sydney Declaration as a political stunt.
Both Harper and Australian Prime Minister John Howard stressed Sunday that the real significance of the APEC statement is who signed on: China, Russia and the United States, the world's biggest emitters, who found common ground.
"You effectively now have a framework declaration on which all large emitters have committed,'' Harper told reporters. "That still leaves a long way to go.
"We're not kidding anybody.''
But Harper maintained that it was "unthinkable'' the world's biggest emitters would agree to such principles even six months ago.
Or, as Howard put it at the closing APEC news conference: "Take that, bank it, and then move on to something further in the future. That is what I think this meeting achieved.''
The Australian prime minister is under intense political pressure domestically. Howard must call an election this fall and his small-c conservative Liberal party trails the opposition badly in the polls.
Australian critics said Howard was playing the environment card at APEC in an effort to buff his image.
But that didn't stop Howard on Sunday from delivering a scathing critique of the Kyoto protocol -- which Australia never signed.
He noted Australia actually met the emissions targets assigned it under Kyoto, "unlike many of the countries that are allegedly bound by the protocol.''
Kyoto, which expires in 2012, is "now falling behind us,'' said Howard, and the world requires a new climate change arrangement.
And he credited Harper with making a similar point during leader negotiations this weekend.
Asked later to clarify Howard's remarks, Harper said he joked during the leaders' meeting that "Kyoto divided the world into two groups: those that would have no targets and those that would reach no targets.''
Harper stressed it was just a quip, "but I think there's a fair amount of truth in it.''
Canada had agreed to achieve among the toughest cuts under the 1997 accord but has actually seen its greenhouse emissions rise significantly since then.
Harper fought the Liberal government over its Kyoto ratification and was an outspoken skeptic about the science of climate change while in Opposition.
But he declined to rip the Kyoto protocol on Sunday.
"I don't think it's irrelevant in the sense that, in fairness, the United Nations established a process that gave us the Kyoto protocol and that progress is still ongoing,'' said the prime minister.
He hopes those talks lead to a "genuine, all-encompassing'' post-Kyoto deal.
