OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper reached a "fraudulent" agreement on climate change with his fellow Asia-Pacific leaders, say the leaders of Green parties in Canada and Australia.
APEC leaders agreed Saturday to a so-called "aspirational goal" of slowing, stopping and eventually reversing greenhouse gas emissions.
But the APEC meetings have always been about trade, says Canadian Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.
By trying to set the rules on climate change, the APEC leaders were attempting to circumvent United Nations talks on the environment, May argued Tuesday during a news conference.
"This is a direct effort to sabotage the upcoming meetings in Bali, Indonesia, at the 13th conference of the parties on climate change," she said.
"(That's) where negotiations belong, within the United Nations system."
May and Australia's Green party accused Harper, U.S. President George W. Bush and Australia's prime minister, John Howard, of trying to diminish global efforts to fight climate change.
Australia's Green party, known as the Greens, issued a statement Tuesday calling Canada and Australia spoilers on climate change, suggesting their governments are being swayed by the energy and logging industries in both countries.
"Prime Minister Harper is desperately trying to renege on Canada's commitments under the Kyoto Protocol," said the Greens spokeswoman on climate change, Senator Christine Milne.
"So it's no wonder he feels at home with Prime Minister Howard, who is equally keen to avoid any binding targets or real action to reduce emissions."
Harper has said the Sydney declaration brings together a divided world on the issue of climate change.
Both Harper and Howard stressed that the real significance of the APEC statement was that the world's biggest emitters - China, Russia and the United States - signed on after finding common ground.
However, without specific targets or timelines, the declaration was immediately panned as a political stunt.
The declaration said APEC member countries would try to improve energy efficiency by at least 25 per cent by 2030.
It also called for forest cover to be increased by at least 20 million hectares by 2020 as a way of combating climate change.
If that were achieved, the additional trees could store about 1.4 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to around 11 per cent of 2004's global emission, the statement said.
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Article online since September 11st 2007, 0:00
Steven Guilbeault - 
