German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet US President George W Bush next week in a bid to seal a deal on climate protection at the G8 summit, government sources said Monday, according to DPA. With just over a week to go before the conference, senior officials of the Group of Eight wealthy nations will hold a new round of talks this week in an attempt to resolve last-minute differences. The meetings follow objections raised by the US administration to a proposed declaration on global warming to be issued during the summit hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Sources said the chancellor planned to meet the US president immediately before the start of the summit on June 6 in the Baltic Sea beach resort of Heiligendamm. The sources described the negotiations as extremely difficult, but said they had not broken down. The German side was still pushing for concessions, they added. In a draft statement obtained by US media, Bush administration officials are rejecting a proposal by Germany to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 50 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2050. They are also reported to be objecting to language calling for raising overall energy efficiencies by 20 per cent by 2020. Merkel told parliament last week that she was not certain an agreement could be reached at the summit to cover the period after the Kyoto protocols on curbing greenhouse gas emissions run out in 2012. The United States did not sign the Kyoto accords. Leaders from Germany, the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Russia are due to attend the three-day gathering of the world's eight main industrial powers in Heiligendamm. In a related development, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel and the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, called Monday for rapid action to combat the dangers posed by climate change. The two politicians said after talks Monday in Berlin that American public opinion on the issue was further advanced than that of the Bush administration. Gabriel said Germany would continue its efforts to see to it that the United States "lives up to its international responsibilities" on climate change.
