Washington - President George W Bush on Friday urged nations that pump out most of the world's greenhouse gases to agree by mid- 2008 on a long-term goal for reducing emissions. The US president lobbied a meeting of 16 key nations to rally behind his voluntary approach to fighting climate change, even though most of the rest of the world believes the US has a responsibility to commit to binding cuts.
Rich and developing nations should agree on "a new international approach" against global warming, Bush said, pointing to the promise of technological advances and new alternatives to fossil fuels.
"As a result, our nations have an opportunity to leave the debates of the past behind and reach a consensus on the way forward," he told the meeting. "No one country has all the answers, including mine."
Convened by Bush, the meeting brought together Western and emerging nations that account for 80 per cent of the world's
emissions of greenhouse gases, including red-hot developing economies such as China,
Brazil and India.
Bush says the small group of key nations can help spur an agreement in broader UN talks aimed at a new international pact against
global warming to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
"By next summer, we will convene a meeting of heads of state to finalize the goal and other elements of this approach, including a strong and transparent system for measuring our progress toward meeting the goal we have set," Bush told delegates.
His appeal to the two-day conference added little to proposals that Bush has laid out over the past year, centred on a US refusal to accept binding international cuts in emissions and reliance on voluntary measures with each country setting its own goals.
"Bush has brought all these countries to
Washington and has offered absolutely nothing new to help solve global warming," said a spokesman for the
Greenpeace pressure group, Daniel Mittler.
