When dozens of world leaders met all day at the United Nations to discuss the fight against global warming, US President George W Bush showed up only for dinner.
Instead, Bush is trying to put the US stamp on the climate change debate with a two-day gathering of 16 major economic powers - and polluters - starting Thursday in Washington.
US officials say the new forum can help spur an international pact to replace the UN Kyoto Protocol, while avoiding Kyoto-style binding cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases that Bush has rejected as harmful to the US economy. He prefers voluntary reductions.
Another US aim is to bring large emerging nations, like China and India, into any new global deal. Failure to include fast-growing developing economies was the other key reason the US nixed Kyoto.
For the US administration, the meeting is also a platform to push back against domestic and international critics who view Bush as the protector of a wasteful, petrol-guzzling nation that cares too little about the planet.
"It's time for the United States, Europe, developing economies - all of us - to get past the myths and any possible finger-pointing, move on, and deal with the challenge of climate change as real partners," US State Department official Kurt Volker said this week.
"There is a myth out there about the US. Don't buy it," he said.
But speakers at Monday's UN meeting urged bolder steps than the US in drafting a follow-on pact to Kyoto, which expires in 2012.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, speaking for the 27-nation European Union, called for a 50 per cent reduction in global greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, leader of the world's seventh-largest economy and a member of Bush's Republican Party, made plain who he believes has pushed the fight against warming.
"While California is leading in the US, we are building on the work of the European countries who have led the way up until now and have done extraordinary work," he said.
Slated to attend the Washington meeting were senior officials from France, Italy, Germany, Britain, Japan, China, Canada, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa. The United Nations also planned to be represented.
Bush, who says each country should set its own measures for fighting greenhouse gases, will address the conference Friday.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he did not view the US initiative as a rival to broader international efforts to reach a post-Kyoto deal, due to start in Bali, Indonesia, in December.
"I am confident that all countries have recognized the necessity and importance of the United Nations taking the lead," Ban said Monday.
But he said "I have high expectations of all countries," including the United States. dpa tc aw
