President Barack Obama addressed the session at the World Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark on Friday morning.
COPENHAGEN — President Obama called on world leaders to come to an agreement on climate change, no matter how imperfect, and pressed for an accord that would monitor whether countries — primarily China — are complying with promised emissions cuts.
Speaking just hours after arriving here for what is supposed to be the last day of difficult talks to address global warming, and clearly frustrated by the absence of any agreement, Mr. Obama was both emphatic and at times impatient.
“The time for talk is over,” he said.
Mr. Obama arrived here prepared to lend his political muscle to secure an agreement on climate change that has eluded world leaders for two weeks. But the tone of his remarks to the plenary session at the Bella Center on Friday indicated that the accord was still plagued by distrust over how nations would hold each other accountable.
“I don’t know how you have an international agreement where you don’t share information and ensure we are meeting our commitments,” he said. “That doesn’t make sense. That would be a hollow victory.”
The talks, continuing for the past two weeks, appeared locked over the verification measures as the final hours of the meeting approached without a deal and with plenty of tension.
Within an hour of Air Force One’s touchdown in Copenhagen on Friday morning, Mr. Obama went into an unscheduled meeting with a high-level group of leaders representing some 20 countries and organizations. Wen Jiabao, the prime minister of China, elected not to attend that meeting, instead sending the vice foreign minister, He Yafei, a snub that left both American and European officials seething.
Mr. Wen did, however, meet privately with Mr. Obama for 55 minutes shortly after the American president’s eight-minute speech to the plenary session. Since China is the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gas pollutants, and the United States is second, the viability of a deal hinges on their cooperation. The two leaders “made progress,” a White House official said, after the meeting that broke up a little after 1:35 p.m. Copenhagen time.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing negotiations, called the discussion “constructive” and said that the two men touched on all of the three issues Mr. Obama raised during his speech: emissions goals from all key countries, verification mechanism, and financing.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Wen asked their negotiators to get together one on one after the meeting, as well as with other countries, “to see if an agreement can be reached,” the White House official said.
Asked if the two had achieved a breakthrough, the official said, “They took a step forward and made progress.”
How long Mr. Obama was to stay in Copenhagen was unclear. Later in the day, Mr. Obama was to meet with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, as the two were to negotiate to replace the expired nuclear arms control treaty.
In his speech to the plenary session, Mr. Obama expressed his urgency to secure a climate deal, no matter how “imperfect” it might have to be.
“We are running short on time,” Mr. Obama warned. “And at this point, the question is whether we will move forward together, or split apart. Whether we prefer posturing to action.”
“We can again choose delay, falling back into the same divisions that have stood in the way of action for years.” But, he warned that such a course would leave leaders “back having the same stale arguments month after month, year after year, perhaps decade after decade—all while the danger of climate change grows until it is irreversible.”
And in a challenge to the assembled national leaders, though not mentioning China directly, he said that America is “ready to get this done today.”
Before Mr. Obama’s speech, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said that China is holding back progress in the climate talks and said that Chinese resistance to monitoring of emissions was a key sticking point.
The countries represented in the meeting Mr. Obama attended shortly after his arrival include Australia, Britain, France, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Russia, India, Mexico, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Norway and Colombia. China was represented by a Foreign Ministry official.
Mr. Wen, who addressed a plenary session of conference delegates as Mr. Obama’s first meeting was ending, outlined China’s actions to reduce emissions and repeated his promise to reduce carbon dioxide intensity — the measure of emissions per unit of economic activity — by between 40 and 45 percent by 2020. He said China would report its emissions as part of an international plan but gave no sign that he was willing to agree to any outside verification measures.
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