Study urges U.S.-China climate change summit

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BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States and China should hold a summit featuring an agreement on climate change, helping to create international support for a new global pact by the end of 2009, a former White House adviser said on Thursday. China and the United States have often been icy rivals over trade and security, and they are also the world's top two emitters of the greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels that are stoking global warming.

BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States and China should hold a summit featuring an agreement on climate change, helping to create international support for a new global pact by the end of 2009, a former White House adviser said on Thursday.

China and the United States have often been icy rivals over trade and security, and they are also the world's top two emitters of the greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels that are stoking global warming.

Kenneth Lieberthal, a former National Security Council officer on Asia in the Clinton administration and now at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., said the two powers should make fighting global warming a centerpiece under President Barack Obama.

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A summit between Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao featuring clean energy and curtailing greenhouse gases as one of the major issues would help surmount domestic misgivings in each country and lift hopes for agreeing a successor to the current Kyoto Protocol by the end of 2009, Lieberthal said in Beijing.

Kyoto is the United Nations' main weapon to fight climate change.

"We should use Sino-U.S. cooperation in order to create momentum for other countries' efforts, which will in turn increase the chances for success at the global climate negotiations," he said.

He was speaking at the release of a study by him and another former Clinton official, David Sandalow, advocating China-U.S. cooperation on climate change. The study is available on the Brookings website (www.brookings.edu).

Lieberthal's call came a week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Beijing, when she pushed the issue.

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