Bush Urges Emissions Goal for Greenhouse Gases

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, seeking to blunt international criticism of the U.S. record on climate change, on Thursday urged 15 major nations to agree by the end of next year on a global emissions goal for reducing greenhouse gases.

Bush called for the first in a series of meetings to begin this fall, bringing together countries identified as major emitters of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. The list would include the United States, China, India and major European countries.
The president outlined his proposal in a speech ahead of next week's summit in Germany of leading industrialized nations, where global warming is to be a major topic and Bush will be on the spot.

The United States has refused to ratify the landmark 1997 Kyoto Protocol requiring industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2012. Developing countries, including China and India, were exempted from that first round of cuts. Bush rejected the Kyoto approach, as well as the latest German proposal for what happens after 2012.

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