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GERMANY: June 12, 2007
HEILIGENDAMM, Germany - Major developing nations pledged to do an unspecified "fair share" to fight climate change on Friday after a summit with G8 leaders during which President George W. Bush appealed for their help.
Leaders of China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa said after the meeting at a G8 summit in Germany that they backed a G8 goal of launching talks on a long-term UN deal to combat global warming a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in December.
"We remain committed to contribute our fair share to tackle climate change," the leaders of the developing nations said in a joint statement with German Chancellor Angela Merkel after the meeting in Heiligendamm.
They did not set any firm targets for braking a fast rise in emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels. Scientists say greenhouse gases will spur more floods, droughts, heatwaves, spread disease and melt polar ice caps.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso quoted Bush as telling developing nations that G8 leaders had agreed "to do our best in a United Nations context" to fight global warming.
"'But for that we need you', and by you he was speaking to China and India," Barroso said. China's President Hu Jintao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were at the meeting.
The United States is the world's top emitter, ahead of China, Russia and India.
Developing nations say rich nations have to lead the way, having been the main source of emissions since the Industrial Revolution. They argue that developing nations have to use more energy to end poverty.
SUBSTANTIAL CUTS
The G8 agreed on Thursday to make "substantial" cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, falling short of European hopes of a deal to seek global emissions cuts of 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
The developing nations said that they called on "all parties to actively and constructively participate in the negotiations on a comprehensive agreement" for launching talks on a long-term climate deal at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in December.
The G8 nations also agreed to push for a launch in Indonesia and to work out a broader world pact by the end of 2009 to succeed the UN's Kyoto Protocol, which obliges 35 rich nations to cut emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
The UN's top climate change official welcomed the agreement by developing nations as boosting chances of the launch of talks in Bali.
"This is a very important complement to what the G8 countries have already agreed," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told Reuters.
"They have also underlined the importance of beginning negotiations in Bali so that means we are ready to go," he said.
But he noted that other groups of countries -- such as African nations, small island states or oil producers -- would also need to agree.
Developing countries have no targets under Kyoto, ratified by all G8 nations except the United States. Bush says that Kyoto is an economic straitjacket and wrongly excludes targets for developing nations in a first period to 2012.
Story by Alister Doyle and Jeff Mason
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
