US hesitates as talks hit limbo

UN climate negotiators in Bonn were left frustrated yesterday as the White House postponed a meeting to determine whether America will stay in the 196-nation Paris Agreement to curb planet-harming fossil fuel.

As uncertainty mounted over the hard-fought pact's future under US President Donald Trump, China's leader Xi Jinping vowed to protect it.

China and France "should protect the achievements of global governance, including the Paris Agreement," the foreign ministry in Beijing quoted Xi as telling his newly-elected counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in a phone call.

Trump has yet to announce whether he intends keeping a campaign promise to withdraw Washington from the hard-fought agreement in whose birth his predecessor, Barack Obama, and Xi were instrumental.

Negotiators in Bonn had their eyes firmly on a White House meeting called to discuss the topic yesterday, but a senior administration official confirmed: "It's been postponed."

No new date was given.

The May 8-18 Bonn meeting is meant to start designing a "rulebook" for implementing the global deal to limit average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.

A total of 196 countries are now parties to the climate deal clinched in 2015 after years of tough bartering.