MAKUHARI, Japan (AFP) — Former prime minister Tony Blair launched a mission Friday to break a deadlock in global climate change negotiations and thrash out a deal that includes the United States and China.
Blair, who stepped down last year after a decade in power, was in Japan for a meeting of the world's top 20 polluters in the so-called Group of 20 initiative on the environment which he launched as prime minister.
As he opened the trip, Blair announced he was heading a new team of experts backed by the United States and Europe that would work to bridge the gap in slow-moving talks on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
"What we are trying to do with the group of experts that's been convened for me is to try and work out what is a global deal that has America and China in it," Blair said after meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.
He said he would work to "try to come up with some suggestions and some options that are politically doable."
"There are plenty of suggestions out there, but they have got to be those that are politically feasible," Blair told reporters.
Blair will take part in this weekend's Group of 20 talks in the Tokyo suburb of Makuhari and then head on to China and India, fast-growing emerging economies key to any future climate deal.
The United States and China are the world's two leading emitters of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, but neither has obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.
US President George W. Bush, who was a close ally of Blair, has argued that the Kyoto Protocol is unfair by making no demands of developing states.
The Bush administration has resisted EU calls for binding goals on emissions cuts after Kyoto's obligations end in 2012, although all major candidates to succeed Bush next year have promised to be more active in fighting climate change.
Blair, speaking in a separate message released on YouTube, spoke out in favour of sizable emissions cuts.
"There is a consensus now right across the world that we need a new global deal and at the heart of it, there has got to be a substantial cut in emissions," Blair said.
Last year's summit of the Group of Eight -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- agreed to seriously consider a target of 50 percent cuts in emissions by 2050.
Japan is hoping that the weekend talks will pave the way for progress at the next Group of Eight summit to take place in July in the northern Japanese mountain resort of Toyako.
"I will work hard so that the meeting will set an overall tone of discussions that will lead to the Toyako summit in July," Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita told reporters.
The Group of 20 meeting is being attended by senior officials from the Group of Eight and emerging economies such as Brazil, China and India.
The meeting comes ahead of the next round of negotiations on a post-Kyoto deal to be held at the end of the month in Bangkok. A UN conference in Bali in December set a goal of sealing a deal by the end of 2009.
But senior Japanese official Koji Tsuruoka said there was no consensus in informal talks here on Friday on either mid-term or long-term emissions cut goals.
Daniel Price, the US assistant to the president on international economic affairs, stood by Washington's position that a future agreement needs to take into account the circumstances of different countries.
"The United states is prepared to enter into binding international commitments, as part of a global agreement that includes commitments by all major economies," Price told reporters.
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