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APEC rift over climate change declaration

A summit of Asia-Pacific leaders reached deadlock on Thursday in debates over the forum's declaration on climate change, Reuters reported.

Chinese president Hu Jintao gave only "qualified support" to Australia’s initiative on climate change, said Reuters, which sought to put climate change at the top of the agenda of this week’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Sydney.

Hu told a news conference he preferred the UN framework for handling climate change proposals, the report said.

"We very much hope that this Sydney Declaration will give full expression to the position that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change would remain the main channel for international efforts to tackle climate change," Hu was quoted as saying.

Australia, backed by the US, says the Kyoto protocol, the world’s main climate change treaty, is flawed because it does not commit big polluters in the developing world, such as India and China, to the same kind of targets as industrialised nations.

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