Blair caught in G8 climate dilemma

LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair is trapped in a dilemma of his own creation over saving the planet from global warming, analysts say.

Blair has put climate change at the heart of his year-long presidency of the Group of Eight industrial nations, but his efforts to get radical action agreed at next month's G8 summit in Scotland are being repeatedly torpedoed by the United States.

Environmental campaigners say this leaves Blair with a stark choice - either drop US President George W. Bush and get a strong agreement with the other G8 members or stay with him, get a weak deal and be blamed for missing a crucial opportunity.

"There is a train wreck coming," said Jennifer Morgan, climate change expert at the WWF.

"The twin targets of trying to get something done on climate change and getting George Bush to sign up to it just don't go together," she told Reuters.

"If Blair praises Bush on climate change on any account and Bush hasn't moved at all, it will signal to the world that the Bush agenda on climate change is OK."

It would be a painful choice for Blair who has made stopping climate change a personal project but who has also identified himself closely with Bush and the transatlantic alliance.

A leaked draft dated June 14 of the final communique due from the summit to be held at the Gleneagles hotel near Edinburgh from July 6-8 reveals the extent of efforts to keep the Americans on board.

There are no targets nor timetables for action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and all references in an earlier draft to dollar funds for research have been removed.

An introductory paragraph has moved the statement "our world is warming" into square brackets, meaning that even the phenomenon of climate change is under question and that the wording may not appear in the final text.

LEAVING BUSH OUT

It has given the same treatment to a statement from the world's top scientists that climate change is already under way and demands urgent action.

Even a suggestion that the developed world has a duty of leadership in combating global warming is given the square brackets brush-off.

"Blair and his advisers always knew exactly what the US position was. But the impression is that they really believed they could force a change," said Friends of the Earth climate expert Catherine Pearce.

"Now they are starting to see that they have failed, but they don't seem to have a Plan B," she added.

On Wednesday in parliament Blair was unrepentant.

"What is necessary is to ensure that we get a process in which the United States are involved," he said.

WWF's Morgan said there was still a chance to get a strong deal to cut carbon dioxide emissions but that if it didn't materialise then Blair and the rest of the G8 should go ahead without the US - the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter.

"If you can't get something with Bush in it, then you shouldn't reduce it to the lowest common denominator. You should move forward in other ways," she said.

"There is a very heated debate going on right now about leaving Bush out in the cold."

The leaked communique presents ample proof.

It has an entire section committing those countries that have signed the Kyoto Protocol on cutting CO2 emissions to strengthening that deal, despite the fact it has been rejected by Washington.

But as further evidence of Blair's dilemma, it too is in square brackets.

- REUTERS