Many nations, including the United States, are awaiting the rules on how to achieve this before tying themselves to the Kyoto pact. Although talks will continue until late Friday, when negotiators are likely to work through the night to find a compromise, some participants expect signals of an agreement to emerge earlier as the political horse-trading heats up. The United States wants unlimited use of those tools, which would help it move the Kyoto pact through a skeptical Congress, despite criticism that they could become loopholes and fail to reduce pollution levels. Developing nations, which are linked through a loose-knit negotiating group dubbed G77 plus China, are struggling at the Hague talks to secure financial help from the industrialized world to implement cleaner technology. Developing nations face no pollution targets under Kyoto but argue they will be the hardest hit by climate change.
Environmentalists say insurers share their concern.
The storms, floods, droughts and fires around the world in 1998 exceeded all weather-related losses of the 1980s.