India has key role in climate change fight, says Bush

The US President insists that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would not succeed till India and China are involved.

As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh prepares to ask the developed world at the G8 Summit on Friday to share responsibility for fighting climate change, US President George W Bush on Thursday insisted that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would not succeed till India and China were involved.

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Bush emphasised the need for creating a bridge between Europe and developing countries like India and China to ensure reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

"By 2008, the world's emitters of greenhouse gases should come together," he told journalists after his meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Heiligendamm near Berlin.

"Nothing is going to happen in terms of substantial reduction unless China and India participate," Bush said, adding "if we want them (India and China) at the table, it is important that we give them the opportunity to set an international goal."

India has held that countries responsible for creating the problem of climate change should come out in a big way to solve this issue. It argues that the greenhouse gas emissions of developed countries even today are many times more than developing countries like India.

Singh is expected to remind the developed countries that as agreed in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, they should act in accordance with their "common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities".

He is also likely to emphatically state that climate change concerns should be integrated with development strategies.