President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper walk down on the way to a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, February 19, 2009.
Photo: Chris Wattie

OTTAWA - The United States and Canada, two significant greenhouse gas emitters, agreed on Thursday to work together on new energy technologies to fight climate change, saying it was key to recovery from global recession.

The agreement was announced in Ottawa during President Barack Obama's first foreign visit during which he held talks with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and pledged to renew historically close ties between the neighbors.

Obama calmed Canadian fears about a "Buy American" clause in the $787 billion U.S. economic recovery plan agreed last week. Canadians fear it will hurt commerce between the two countries, which have the world's largest trading partnership.

"Now is a time where we have to be very careful about any signals of protectionism," Obama told a joint news conference after several hours of talks with Harper. He stressed the United States would meet its international trade obligations.

"I'm quite confident that the United States will respect those obligations and continue to be a leader on the need for globalized trade," Harper said.

The two leaders said they had agreed to cooperate on "clean energy" technology that Obama said this week would allow both countries to use fossil fuels such as oil and coal while generating less pollution.

"It will include elements like carbon capture and sequestration and the smart grid," a White House official explained earlier.

Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas blamed by scientists for warming the Earth. Carbon sequestration, which is not yet commercially viable, involves capturing the gas and storing it underground before it enters the atmosphere.

(Additional reporting by Doug Palmer in Washington and Randall Palmer in Ottawa; Editing by David Storey)