China,France: Automatic Emissions Cuts

BEIJING (AP) -- French President Francois Hollande said Monday that he and his Chinese counterpart have agreed that a global climate change pact should require countries to increase their emissions cuts every five years.

France is proposing the automatic updating of countries' emissions targets in a climate deal to be thrashed out at a U.N. conference in Paris beginning later this month, and the support of China, the world's biggest carbon emitter, is significant.

"What we have just established here in this declaration is a likelihood that the Paris conference will succeed," Hollande said at a news conference in the Great Hall of the People, the seat of China's legislature. "That doesn't mean that the Paris conference is definitely going to be a success, but the conditions for success have been laid down in Beijing today."

Hollande also said that he and President Xi Jinping had agreed their countries should develop low-carbon economies by 2050 to help combat climate change.

Hollande said Xi confirmed that he would attend the opening of the climate conference on Nov. 30. It runs through Dec. 11.

(KA)