Musical chairs.

In the morning after the evening in which a climate bargain was meant to be hammered out, all hell is breaking loose. It started a little after 8 am when the text that was meant to be a fait accompli came out. I knew there was trouble when I saw James Connaughton, Chairman of the US President’s Council of Environment Quality. He was quite agitated to the point where his bald head was beet red. He was grabbing delegates as they walked by and I followed him down the hall with a Japanese colleague he was speaking with. All I could make out was mitigation, or some reference to it in the text he was appalled about. Then they gathered with Japan, Australia (Penny Wong), and Minister Baird, who arrived a little after the meeting got underway (8.21am) in the Tulip Room of the Westin Hotel. As they exited the meeting room, Connaghton pigeon holed Baird to make a point. I could not hear what he said, but Baird replied “2006,” which is Canada’s current base year for measuring GHG reductions.

Back in the main plenary, there were two false starts, as the G-77 was meeting in another room with Indonesia’s foreign minister hammering over text that was changed last night without their input. This made the Chinese angry. A junior person in the delegation raised an objection about concurrent meetings taking place. The Indonesian Environment Minister who is supposed to be the President of the meeting said he would ask the Foreign Minister to wrap things up and they would convene in a few minutes, to which the Chinese delegate said: "No, not in a few minutes. Until they are done.” The Chinese senior negotiator came back in the room and in English (which they never speak in the plenary), said: "The G-77 is meeting with the Foreign Minister of the Indonesian Government. I would like to seek clarification from the Secretariat why these meetings are going on concurrently. I think the Secretariat did this intentionally. I would like to ask for an apology from the Secretariat." Yvo de Boer, UN Executive Secretary could be overheard: “Yes, now, I’m offended.” Then the Environment Minister adjourned the meeting.

The problem here is that the meeting now has two chairs. The official one, who is nice but viewed as a bit weak and the foreign minister who was brought in the second day of high level meetings and is effectively running the show—though the two ministers are clearly not on the same page at all times.

I walked over to the Chinese delegation to listen in on a conversation between the German Environment Minister and the Chinese lead negotiator. The junior Chinese delegate was waving his fingers and yelling “Twice, twice,” referring to the fact that the plenary meeting had been convened twice while the G-77 was meeting outside with the Foreign Minister.

The senior Chinese negotiator accused the German Environment Minister of colluding with the US to make the language tougher for the G-77 and China. The German Minister took exception to this and said no way. The EU met this morning at 7am and there was no discussion of this nor meeting with the US. China shot back saying, "Yes maybe, but maybe someone other than you met with them." The German was adamant that this did not happen, and then he said some pretty powerful things: If this fails, the UN fails, and that is a big victory for the US. If we dig our heels in now, the US wins. They can go back and say: “Look, the UN can’t get anything done. They are so stupid. Then they win. We lose.” The German Minister continued: "I have to go on a TV interview tomorrow before a national audience, and what am I going to tell them?” The Chinese delegate said he agreed, but that he couldn’t understand how the same mistake was made twice. Germany replied that the reason was simple: there are two chairs of the meeting and they are not talking to each other. The German Minister then said, “I’m a friend of China. I didn’t have the Dalai Lama in my office.” This seemed to build some rapport. Then the Chinese said something about the quality of German technology. The German Minister said his riding was close to Siemans headquarters and he had had the honour of having Jiang Zemin visit his home.

The German Minister then said: "Next time we need to work more closely and I am sure we will have only one chair to deal with."

John Baird and Eric Richer both intercepted me on my way out to underline that this was not Canada’s fault.

I then went and slipped a note to Yvo saying that the Chinese didn’t mean to insult him, it was just that their one-party country made it difficult for them to understand how the Indonesian government could be so uncoordinated, and suggested that it would go some way if he could get the Secretary General to apologize for the unintentional process overlap.

That’s all for now.