G8 wrangles over climate change, aid to Africa

TOYAKO, Japan (Reuters) - World leaders head into the second day of the annual G8 summit preoccupied by soaring food and oil prices and deeply divided over how to tackle climate change.

Senior officials from the Group of Eight rich nations were meeting late into the night in Japan to thrash out wording that would allow President George W. Bush on Tuesday to put aside deep misgivings and sign on to a global goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century.

Bush is under strong pressure from Japan and Europe but says he will not back a numerical target unless big polluters including China and India agree to binding commitments to curb their carbon pollution.

A face-saving statement that goes beyond last year's summit pledge in Germany to "seriously consider" cuts of 50 percent by 2050 is especially important for Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who has made climate change the centerpiece of the talks.

"This is really our bottom line. I think the prime minister believes that at this summit somehow he will be able to convince President Bush to accept some kind of consensus formula," said Japanese Foreign Ministry official Kazuo Kodama.

Global warming ties into other big themes at the three-day meeting at a plush mountain-top hotel on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, where 21,000 police have been mobilized to protect the leaders.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who attended Monday's talks, said the drive to reach eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the U.N. General Assembly to reduce world poverty by 2015 was being directly hampered by global warming.

He urged the G8 to send a strong political signal by setting a long-term goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, backed by intermediate targets that would set market forces in train to reduce energy consumption.

"We tend to think of climate change as something in the future. It is not. We see now, most of all in Africa, that drought and changing weather patterns are compounding the challenges we face in attaining the MDGs," Ban said.