The conference, aimed at implementing measures to reduce global Greenhouse emissions, stalled over key issues as negotiators tried desperately to break the deadlock in a marathon all-night session of talks.
"Better a failure than a bad deal now," said Belgian Environment Minister Magda Aelvoet.
British Deputy Premier and Environment Secretary John Prescott hastily left the conference building in The Hague saying: "We were so close. I felt so sorry for the many people who had such high hopes."
Greenpeace International said the 14-day conference will be remembered for "when governments abandoned the promise of global cooperation to protect planet Earth".
"The United States, Japan and Canada came here to torpedo the Kyoto Protocol. They are responsible for the failure of the conference," said Regine Guenter of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).
Friends of the Earth said that after "two weeks of waffle...nothing effective has been achieved".
It accused the umbrella group of nations led by the U.S. of fighting "tooth and nail to exploit every loophole in the Kyoto Treaty. They wanted unlimited hot air trading with Russia and the Ukraine".
Philip E. Clapp, of the U.S. National Environment Trust, however, blamed the Europeans, saying: "The proposal put forward by the U.S. delegation represented major progress toward reducing global warming pollution."
There were huge differences between the E.U. and the U.S. on the issue of including carbon sinks such as forests in domestic emission reduction programmes and on the total amount of domestic reductions for each country.
The Hague conference, which officially ends on Saturday afternoon, has dealt primarily with the issue of implementing the Kyoto Protocol on reducing Greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels between the years 2008 and 2012.
The conference late Friday postponed decisions on technical details of a comprehensive agreement to a follow-up meeting in Bonn. Negotiators then turned their attention to formulating a political agreement that likewise brought little headway regarding the positions held by the U.S. and the E.U.
(la/dpa)
