Bush says his climate plan will complement U.N. bid

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (Reuters) - The United States offered reassurance on Wednesday that its plan for fighting climate change would not undermine U.N. efforts but ruled out agreeing deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions at a G8 summit.
"This will fold into the U.N. framework," Bush told reporters of his plan announced last week to arrange talks by the top 15 emitters of greenhouse gases with the aim of agreeing long-term cuts by the end of 2008.
Washington also said it would oppose a push by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to agree to sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions at the meeting of leading industrial powers also expected to tackle issues including missile defenses and Africa.
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Many European nations had expressed concerns that Bush's plan might hijack U.N. talks on a global deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the main U.N. plan for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, which runs to 2012.
Prior to meeting Merkel for a lunch at the start of the June 6-8 summit on Germany's Baltic coast, Bush said the U.S. would serve as a bridge for the various approaches to dealing with climate change.
Merkel, chairing the annual meeting of the Group of Eight (G8), had hoped to secure U.S. backing for a pledge to halve emissions by 2050 and limit warming of global temperatures to a key scientific threshold of 2 degrees Celsius.
But she is now likely to settle for an expression of U.S. support for United Nations efforts to combat climate change and an agreement to tackle emissions at a later date. Continued...