President George W. Bush said Tony Blair should not expect any special favours at this week's G8 summit despite the British prime minister's solid support for the Americans in Iraq.
LONDON — U.S. President George W. Bush said Tony Blair should not expect any special favours at this week's G8 summit despite the British prime minister's solid support for the Americans in Iraq.
Speaking on the eve of a 3-day meeting of the Group of Eight (G8) leaders in Gleneagles, Scotland, Bush said he did not view his relationship with Blair as "one of quid pro quo".
"Tony Blair made decisions on what he thought was best for keeping the peace and winning the war on terror, as I did," he told British broadcaster ITN in an interview to be shown later on Monday.
"So I go to the G8 not really trying to make him look bad or good, but I go to the G8 with an agenda that I think is best for our country."
The president ruled out committing the United States at Gleneagles to a legally binding agreement on global warming along the lines of the 1997 Kyoto protocol, which Washington has refused to ratify.
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"If this (the agreement expected at Gleneagles) looks like Kyoto, the answer is 'no,'" Bush said. "The Kyoto treaty would have wrecked our economy, if I can be blunt."
However, he described climate change as "a significant, long-term issue that we've got to deal with" and acknowledged that human activity was "to some extent" to blame for the problem.
Scientists have warned that the world's climate could warm by more than two degrees by the end of the century because of greenhouse gases from activities like burning fossil fuels.
G8 nations Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia have all signed up for the Kyoto protocol, which aims to cut emissions of carbon dioxide by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
Bush pulled out in 2001, saying Kyoto would be too costly and wrongly excluded developing nations.
Source: Reuters
