The UN-sponsored climate change conference in this exotic Moroccan city has maintained an air of civility conspicuously absent from the turbulent COP-6 conference in The Hague a year ago. In The Hague, disagreements between the US and the EU over the use of sinks to store carbon emissions led to the collapse of the talks. Once again, the EU is in a battle over sinks. Only this time, the Europeans' opponent is not Washington, but Moscow.

The confrontation was foreshadowed last July, when, shortly after adoption of the Bonn Agreement, Russia let it be known that it wasn't enthusiastic about the accord reached in the former West German capital. Upping the ante, the Russians announced in late October that they wanted their credit for sinks doubled to 34 million metric tons. Not only does the Russian demand violate the Bonn Agreement,which was to serve as the basis for COP-7 in Marrakech, but subsequent negotiations have uncovered additional problems with sinks.

For Russia, sinks, as outlined in the Bonn Agreement, primarily refer to forests. It is now clear that at Bonn too little thought was given to the transitional nature of forests. How to account for afforestation, deforestation, and reforestation in an inventory of sinks is bedeviling negotiators in Marrakech. Not only does the EU object to Russia's wanting to double its sink allotment under the Bonn Agreement, but the Europeans appear suspicious of how Moscow might use a loose definition of what constitutes a forest to claim excessive emissions reductions.

Acquiescing in Moscow's demand means reopening the Bonn Agreement, something the EU has said repeatedly is "unacceptable." But alienating the Russians could keep Moscow from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, a risk treaty supporters dare not take now that the United States has rejected the climate pact.

In these final hours of the conference, nerves are noticeably jittery. Michael Zammit Cutajar, executive director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), expressed the hope that agreement could be reached on this and other outstanding issues in the short time remaining before the conference adjourns. When asked at a press conference about the possibility that other - unnamed - countries may join the US in not ratifying the treaty, Cutajar answered dryly that, "You can do the arithmetic."

The hard-line Russian position on sinks has given the Japanese considerable leverage on a matter of importance to them, compliance. Tokyo does not want the Kyoto Protocol's emissions-reduction scheme to be legally binding, which is the exact opposite of the EU's position. Under the Bonn Agreement, the matter is to be settled at the COPMOP, a mopping up session devoted to clarifying any outstanding issues set to take place sometime after the World Summit on Sustainable Development scheduled for September 2002 in Johannesburg.

Meanwhile, the EU is trying to keep the Japanese on board by pointing out that the "flexible mechanisms" with which countries can meet their Kyoto commitments, don't come into play until the compliance system has been adopted. Japan has been a big backer of flexible mechanisms, but has yet to warm up to the compliance system. And unless the Japanese can be made to live with the compliance system agreed to at Marrakech earlier this week,their unhappiness could further complicate the ratification process.

Knowing the stakes are high, delegates at COP-7 appear determined to reach a deal in the conference's final hours. Cutajar expects the talks to drag on well into the night.

Bonner R. Cohen is a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va.