Rice cancels Asian trip amid uncertainty over Sharon's health
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-07 17:17

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has scrapped her trip to Asia next week so she can monitor the condition of ailing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Rice was to meet ministers from Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea at the first Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, and to visit Indonesia's president to discuss issues ranging from bird flu to security.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Friday Rice would likely visit Australia in March; the Indonesian trip has yet to be rescheduled.

A separate U.S. strategic dialogue planned next week with ministers from Japan and Australia must also be rescheduled, McCormack said, though new dates haven't been set.

U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman will take Rice's place at the Australian climate meeting.

The six countries gathering in Sydney account for nearly half the world's population, energy use and economic output, and U.S. officials hope the conference will spur more private investment in the region while also creating cleaner energy technologies and slowing global warming.

White House environmental adviser James Connaughton said Friday that the United States will make a financial contribution toward environmental efforts, though he declined to provide further details.

The United States, he said, would also suggest ways to share U.S. technologies used to reduce pollution with the countries at the meeting.

Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky said Friday that the Australian meeting complements, rather than replaces, the Kyoto climate treaty that U.S. President George W. Bush rejected because of its mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide, methane and other gases.

"There's a shared vision, and a shared commitment," she said of the six countries gathering in Sydney. "In this case, it goes beyond the framework of the Kyoto protocol."

Among major developed nations, only the United States and Australia reject the 1997 treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, that mandates specific cutbacks in emissions of carbon dioxide and five other gases by 2012 in 35 industrialized countries.

China and India signed the treaty as developing nations, exempting them from the first round of emissions cuts. Japan must cut emissions by 6 percent below 1990 levels, and South Korea by 5 percent.

In Indonesia, Rice had planned to meet with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to discuss the country's democratic development, the fight against bird flu and Indonesia's recovery from the 2004 tsunami.

The State Department, McCormack said, conveyed news of Rice's cancellation to the Indonesians through officials in the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.

The United States restored military ties with Indonesia in November, ending a six-year ban on military contacts with the world's most populous Muslim nation. The ban was imposed because of human rights concerns.

U.S. officials said continuing to isolate Indonesia, which has been hit by several bombings by al-Qaida-linked terrorists in recent years, wasn't in Washington's strategic interest.