Next U.S. president likely to agree to CO2 cuts: UN

MADRID (Reuters) - There is good chance the next U.S. administration will agree to tight controls on its carbon emissions and help reach a deal by the end of 2009 to slow climate change, Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said on Thursday.

The Bush administration has refused to commit to the United States cutting its carbon emissions, rejecting European calls for worldwide action to cut climate warming gases.

But Democrat presidential candidate Barrack Obama and his Republican adversary John McCain are both likely to agree to cuts, de Boer said.

"(There is) a very good chance in the sense that both McCain and Obama are committed to the issue of climate change," he told Reuters in an interview at the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid.

"Both of the candidates support a cap and trade approach and that fits in very well with the way things are developing internationally."

De Boer said developing countries would have to agree to make some contribution to fighting climate change if a meaningful global pact is to be reached at a meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009 to widen and toughen the existing Kyoto Protocol.

He said it was unlikely any concrete action would be agreed at the G8 summit of rich industrialized nations next week in Japan.

"I don't think it's going to happen at this meeting but what we really need from the G8 is leadership by that group of countries. Leadership in the form of an indication of where they want their emission reductions to be by 2020. What we need is clarity on goals for 2020."

He said developing countries must be given better access to new green technologies and that oil producing countries should prove key to the fight against global warming.