Bush urged to back U.N. climate deal at summit

By Noah Barkin

BERLIN (Reuters) - The EU, United Nations and G8 president Germany urged U.S. President George W. Bush on Monday to help strike a U.N. deal to combat climate change at a summit of major powers this week and not to pursue rival proposals.

Bush, who left for Europe on Monday, last week unveiled a plan for fighting global warming beyond 2012, saying he wanted the world's top 15 emitters to meet later this year and agree new measures by the end of 2008.

He shocked EU leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel who wants the G8 leading industrialized countries to forge a U.N.-backed consensus on cutting greenhouse gases at the summit in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm.

European Union countries fear the Bush plan could sabotage efforts to produce a successor to the Kyoto Protocol under the auspices of the United Nations.

They are hoping to convince Bush to integrate his proposals with the U.N. process or send a clear signal that they do not compete with it.

Speaking in Berlin after a meeting with leading climate experts, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called Bush's proposals a "step in the right direction" but cautioned Washington against going down a separate track.

"It was a good step but I think it is important that the commitment of the United States is not seen to be in parallel or even in contradiction to the global efforts but as a contribution to the efforts that are being planned in the United Nations," Barroso said.

Merkel, who favors a 50 percent cut in emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, has acknowledged she will probably fail to overcome U.S. objections to her call for a deal to limit warming to a rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).

But European and U.N. officials hope the Group of Eight (G8) -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- can avert failure by giving political impetus for December U.N. climate talks in Bali, Indonesia.

They hope to launch talks in Bali on extending and expanding the Kyoto Protocol.

HEATWAVES

Kyoto, which Bush rejected in 2001, is meant as a first step to fend off projections of ever increasing heatwaves, floods and rising seas linked to rising emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels.

It obliges 35 rich nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Bush said it would cost too much and wrongly omitted developing countries.

Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official, acknowledged the G8 was unlikely to agree on the firm emission reduction targets Merkel had pushed for, but said the summit could still be a success in moving the climate debate forward.

"I still think that this G8 can fulfill a very important role," he said, if leaders could agree on a need to launch negotiations in Bali for sharp emission cuts, based on the latest scientific findings about warming.