Bonn, Germany - US President Barack Obama's presence at next month's climate summit in the Danish capital Copenhagen is vital, a UN official said Wednesday in the German city of Bonn. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), voiced optimism that there would be a deal on emissions caps, saying, "I expect to see in Copenhagen a list of industrialized-country targets for 2020."
Major western leaders have said they will personally attend the UN climate change conference when it starts in less than two weeks.
De Boer, speaking just after a Danish news agency reported that Obama had committed to be present on December 9, said his attendance would be "decisive," noting that the rest of the world was looking to see what the United States would do.
Other nations had already set out their plans to reduce emissions of climate-change gases such as carbon dioxide and it was now up to the United States to follow suit, de Boer added. The cuts are needed to prevent unrestrained global warming.
De Boer said the summit was there to settle political targets, which could then be confirmed later by treaty.
"I don't think any country would back away from their target in the course of a negotiating process to a treaty," he added.
"There isn't any Plan B," said de Boer.
